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THE 



LAMB OF GOD 



OR THE 



Scriptural Philosophy 



OF THE 



Atonement 



William P. Pinkham, A. M. 

MINISTER OF THE GOSPEI, 



published by 
The Ci,evei,and Bibi<e Training School. 

1899. 

I 









o* 













c8 



COPYRIGHT 1895 

BY 

WIUJAM P. PINKHAM 

TWO C0 r 



ED, 






(( 1 4 1899 



\* 




PRESSES OF GERMAN AMERICAN PRINTiNQ COMPANY 
CLEVELAND, ohm 






* 



7b /^<W£ 720^/tf 

young men and young women 
who now, in such numbers, 
are consecrating themselves to God for 
faithful and enduring service, 
a7id who, to this end, are 
seeking the light of His truth, this 
volume is lovingly dedicated 
by the author. 



PREFACE. 



'T^HE following pages are written with an earnest 
desire to set forth clearly and helpfully the 
ground of the Christian's hope. The effort is a 
sincere and humble response to the oft-repeated 
request of those who have heard this exposition of 
Bible truth presented by word of mouth. It is not 
an exhaustive treatise, and it may embrace little 
that will be new to the well-instructed Christian. 
No attempt has been made to consider all that is 
included in the Savior's work for us, His sacrificial 
death, in its primary significance as our propitia- 
tion, being the point chiefly in view. It is hoped, 
however, that many a seeker after truth will here 
find light upon some of his difficulties respecting 
the way of salvation ; and even that mature dis- 
ciples will experience new assurance and new joy 
as again they " survey the wondrous cross." 

The reader is requested to peruse this book 



6 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

prayerfully and studiously, observing the Scripture 
references with. care. 

A few related subjects which could not properly 
be introduced into the body of the work, are treated 
in brief appendices, which may prove helpful to 
the understanding or the faith of some, and which 
are commended to the reader's earnest attention. 

W. P. P. 



GENERAL OUTLINE. 



PAGE. 
9 



Introduction — Chap. I. - 

Statement and Exposition of the Problem of Human Salvation* 
* Chaps. II. to VI. 

Chap. II. Universality of Sin Among Men. - - 15 

Chap. III. Consequences of Sin. - - 20 

Chap. IV. "In Adam all Die." 29 

Chap. V. Dead Through Our Trespasses. - 34 

Chap. VI. Difficulties of the Problem. - 39 

The Despair of Humanity. Chap. VII. to XI. 

Chap. VII. A Divine Suggestion. - - 44 

Chap. VIII. The Suggestion in Shadow. - 48 

Chap. IX. The Shadow not the Substance. - 53 

Chap. X. God Must Undertake, • 57 

Chap. XI. Men at Their Wits' End. 60 

God Undertakes. Chaps. XII. to XI V# 

Chap. XII. All the Prophets. - 64 

Chap. XIII. Clear Light on the Problem. - 71 
Chap. XIV. The Preparation. ... 78 

God Succeeds. Chaps. XV. to XVI. 

Chap. XV. A Perfect Solution. ... 85 

Chap. XVI. The Offering of Christ Sufficient. - 98 

The Results. Chaps- XVII. to XXII. 

Chap. XVII. An Open Way. 106 

Chap. XVIII. Forgiveness of Sin. - - 116 

Chap. XIX. Sanctified and Kept. - - 124 

Chap. XX. Perfected Forever. - 133 

Chap. XXI. Complete iu Him. - 136 

Chap. XXII. " Behold What Manner of Love." - 145 



8 THE LAMB OF GOD. 



157 

- 163 
170 

- 175 
183 

- 191 
195 

- 199 
206 
211 
213 

- 219 

Alphabetical Index. - - - - - 222 



\ppenc 


ices 


A. 


Future Punishment. 


B. 


Satan. 


C 


Divine Wrath. - 


D. 


Immortality. 


B. 


Total Depravity. 


F. 


The Divine Fatherhood. 


G. 


Three in One. - 


H. 


An Early Revelation. 


T 
A. 


Divine Passibility. 


J. 


The Unpardonable Sin. 


K. 


Errors About the Blood. 


L. 


Christ and the Children. 



CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTION. 

r "PHE vast army of young Christians marshalled 
* under the name, or in the character, of Soci- 
eties of Christian Endeavor, is to me an inspiration. 
It calls forth my most earnest prayers. To its 
ranks I look for great exploits in the conflict of the 
church against sin. Thence are to come the minis- 
ters, teachers, missionaries, who, with advantages 
that have fallen to no other generation, are to storm 
the fortresses of indolence, ignorance and crime; and, 
with an effectiveness unknown since the apostles, 
proclaim the Gospel to every creature. These are 
to reform society, purify government, unify the 
nations, herald the advent, usher in peace. 

But whether their history shall be that of con- 
tinuous victory, or of frequent vicissitude and defeat; 
whether the ultimate triumph shall be hastened or 
be long delayed, will depend very largely upon the 
readiness of the individual soldier to clothe himself 
with the panoply of war — "the whole armor of 
God."* It will not be sufficient that he have "the 

*In this book italics in quotations from the Bible are for em- 
phasis. 



10 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

hope of salvation," "the breastplate of righteous- 
ness," and "the shield of faith," essential as these 
certainly are to successful warfare. He must also 
have the girdle of truth, "the preparation of the 
Gospel of peace," and "the sword of the Spirit, which 
is the word of God." 

Veteran soldiers of the cross know well the cun- 
ning craftiness with which the followers of Satan 
substitute plausible notions for the clear teachings 
of the Holy Scriptures, plausible interpretations of 
Scripture even, for that self-consistent and logically 
impregnable system of truth, which was once deliv- 
ered to the saints ; and which has in its favor the 
concurrent testimony of the great body of believers 
of every succeeding age. 

A host of Godless isms clamor against the servant 
of Christ. Some of them wear the garb of truth, and 
seem so like Christianity itself, that one is tempted 
to think them at least harmless. But once admitted 
to the chambers of the heart, they begin their sad 
work of replacing faith with doubt, zeal with indif- 
ference, and the sweet peace of God with a vain 
conceit of knowledge. It is the old story of Flat- 
terwell, who knocked at the door of a goodly castle 
and humbly asked admission, swearing that he 
was friendly and alone ; but once admitted by the 



INTRODUCTION. II 

irresolute porter, whose fears he had disarmed with 
kindly words, he was followed by a swarthy retinue, 
bent upon pillage and murder. Many a child of 
God has not only become useless on God's side, but 
has lent his energies to the direct service of sin, and 
even made shipwreck of faith, by admitting into 
his belief, in moments of unwatchfulness, some 
beautiful speculation of whose true nature he was 
not aware. 

The conservation and proper use of all that holy 
energy which is imparted to the believer at conver- 
sion, requires a clear understanding of the "principles 
of the doctrine of Christ." Such an understanding 
is not to be reached through the avowed enemies of 
Christianity ; nor yet through those of the Christian 
name whose conceptions of Christ and of his word 
preclude the experience of his life-giving power. 
Societies exist, some of them under the name of 
churches, which deny the L,ord that bought them. 
These cannot be trusted to interpret for us the 
Scriptures that testify of Him. They are willing 
to meet true Christianity part way, by admitting 
that the Bible contains, in some sense, a revelation 
of God ; but that sense is to be determined by the 
reason of men ; and, deny it as they will, they make 
human wisdom the final arbiter in questions of re- 



12 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

ligion. They meet Christianity part way by using 
freely its phraseology ; but even to its most import- 
ant and distinctive terms- they attach a meaning 
which would rob the Gospel of all that vitality and 
that exquisite finish whieh make it " sharper than 
any two-edged sword." 

Evangelical churches, on the contrary, regard 
the Bible as infallible in its teachings, and as the 
supreme outward rule of faith and practice. They 
insist that it is a product of Divine inspiration. 
They make the Bible itself and the Holy Spirit, 
who witnesses with it, its only true interpreters ; 
and they refuse to abandon its plain, simple state- 
ments, and its all comprehending, self-consistent 
system, for the allurements of pretended philosophy 
or the thrusts of opposing criticism. They cling to 
that interpretation of Scripture which makes it 
"mighty through God to the pulling down of 
strongholds ;" which has, in every age and among 
all peoples, brought conviction of sin, furnished the 
repentant a well-grounded hope, reformed and 
transformed society. 

The center and foundation of the true Christian 
faith is Christ crucified for us. The atonement 
made by Him is the one great transaction of history. 
In its light every other transaction is to be judged, 



INTRODUCTION. 1 3 

and every doctrine. Every failure to grasp the 
truth of God respecting this great transaction, is a 
failure to be able to interpret correctly a part — 
perhaps the greater part— of the Holy Scriptures. 
On the other hand, almost every portion of our 
blessed Bible glows with a new wealth and splendor 
of meaning in the light of the unveiled cross. To 
miss this is to miss all that is best in Divine reve- 
lation. To have this is to be powerfully fortified 
against errors of belief or conduct. 

Of the many who profess the Christian religion, 
notably those who most fully exhibit the triumphs 
of grace, the fruits of the Spirit, and the power to 
prevail with God and men, are those who have 
caught that conception of the significance of 
Christ's death, in which all other just conceptions 
of it are involved, or to which they are secondary. 
That one conception, impressed Divinely and in- 
delibly by the experience of salvation, becomes the 
true and effectual touchstone of belief and practice. 
Through this, bigotry, superstition, foolish philoso- 
phies and iron creeds are, and are to be, discovered 
and rejected, until the Church of Christ shines forth 
" as the morning, clear as the sun, fair as the moon, 
and terrible as an army with banners." 

To see and know Jesus, then, in the light in 



14 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

which God through the Holy Scriptures would re- 
veal Him, is the potent secret of victory to the 
Christian church. To this end may we find help 
in the prayerful study of the following pages. 



UNIVERSALITY OF SIN. 1 5 



CHAPTER IL 



UNIVERSALITY OF SIN. 



"For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." 

—Rom. 3, 23. 

^UHY is it that in seeking to present trie most 
" " inspiring subject which the human mind 
can contemplate, we begin with facts the most mel- 
ancholy and repulsive ? It is because the skill of 
the Physician can be appreciated by those only who 
understand the complexity and malignity of the 
disease which he endeavors to remedy. The skill 
of the craftsman may be evinced in the beauty and 
utility of his handiwork; but it appears more re- 
markable and more praiseworthy when we know 
the extreme difficulties that beset his undertaking, 
and that he alone had the courage, the devotion and 
the ability to meet those difficulties and overcome 
them. Redemption cannot be rightly studied, apart 
from the thought of human sin and sinfulness. 

The student, therefore, who would see the King 
in His beauty, and be ready to join in heartfelt 
hosannas to the Son of David, must very studiously 
examine those facts over which the Son of David 
has triumphed. It is meet, then, to begin with the 



1 6 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

above text, and to consider faithfully and prayer- 
fully the sad fact which that text presents to us. 

Sin, sin everywhere. Sin in the heart, on the 
tongue, in the actions. Sin in the bar-room, the 
theater, the ballroom, the gambling-den. Sin be- 
hind the counter and in front of it Sin in palace 
and hovel, city and country. Sin in the state and 
in the church. Sin in legislator, judge, jury, clerk 
and constable. Sin in confessional and cloister, 
clergyman and layman. Sin in the little child 
and the man of gray hairs. 

A race marked with sin. " Not a just man up- 
on earth that dceth good and sinneth not'* " No 
man that sinneth u:t."~ •■ They are all together 
become filthy ; there is none that doeth good, no, 
not cne.": "Jews and Gentiles all 

under sin."** Thus saith the Lord, whose word 
standeth forever. "If we say we have not sinned, 
we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us. "ft 

But the conscience of man bears witness also.:: 
Persms are found who, in resisting the appeals of 
God's messengers, say, H I don't know that I am a 
sitmer.-' But if these same persons hear a minister 
preach holiness as a state to be known in this life. 

"Z:cl. 7, 20. ti K :?s. zi. 5. ""^Rom. 3,9. jjijno. 

1. 10. ::Rom. 2, 15. 



UNIVERSALITY OF SIN. 1 7 

they are ready to exclaim, " Show me a holy man ; 
I never saw one." So they acknowledge sin in all 
others, though professedly blind to its existence in 
themselves. So, indeed, do they condemn them- 
selves, unless they assume a superiority to all others. 

The universality of sin among men has been 
acknowledged by Heathens, by Jews and by Chris- 
tians. Both philosophy and religion have sought 
a remedy and a preventive. Generally they have 
sought in vain. There is but one exception, and 
that is Christianity. Its triumph is as yet but 
limited, because its acceptance is but limited ; but 
it — and it only — contains the promise of victory 
and answers the test of experiment. 

Yet while Christianity is seeking to bring light 
and joy, and righteousness, and salvation to the 
world, all the powers of darkness are arrayed against 
it. Not a soul to whom the Gospel comes, but does 
in some sense, in some degree, at some time, resist 
its offers and invitations — another proof that the 
human race, to a man, is marked with sin. 

Why is sin thus universal ? And why this re- 
sistance to the only well attested ground of hope, 
the only plan which, with all the majesty of Divine 
authority, offers us pardon and cleansing, complete 
reconciliation to God, and unbounded enjoyment of 



1 8 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

God ? By the light of God's own word we shall 
see. 

But, whatever we shall find to be the cause 
of the universality of sin, it is well to mark, in the 
outset, that the cause is not to be found in the orig- 
inal nature of man. Upon this point the evidence 
is clear and strong. As made, man was under Di- 
vine approval.* This could not have been said if 
his original constitution had been in any part, or in 
any degree, corrupt, and a source of sin. He pos- 
sessed spiritual life. As to his animal nature he 
was, and is, made from the tl dust of the ground." 
But by whatever process formed, he " became a 
living soul " by the Divine inbreathing of life, t 
No doubt the expression, " breathed into his nostrils 
the breath of life," means in its highest significance 
something widely different from the filling of the 
lungs with air. It w T as rather the impartation of 
that higher form of life — far above mere animal 
or mere rational life— in virtue of which man could 
hold direct spiritual communion with God, J please 
Him in character and conduct, § be justly regarded 
as in the Divine image, *f and be, in another sense 
than that which could be claimed for animals in 

*Gen. z, 31. fGen. 2, 7. JGen. 1, 28-30; 2, 16-17. gEccl. 7, 
29. *JGen. 1, 26; 5, 1. 



UNIVERSALITY OF SIN. 19 

general, a " son of God"* He was sonnd in body 
and in mind, infirmities and sicknesses being among 
the results of sin which were to be removed by that 
redemption which should restore man to Divine 
favor, f Here, then, was a being by every scriptural- 
test free from sin, capable of continuing in holi- 
ness, and capable of begetting a sinless offspring:, , 
And yet, "all men have sinned and come short of 
the glory of God." 

*Luke. 3, 38. fMat. 8, 17. 



20 THE LAMB OF GOD. 



CHAPTER III. 

CONSEQUENCES OF SIN. 
" The wages of sin is death." — Rom. 6, 24. 
OIN has its consequences — unhappy consequences 
^ of course. This goes without argument. It 
is written as a conviction in every heart, and ex- 
emplified in every life. Even the child who sins 
is conscious of remorse and a "certain fearful look- 
ing-for of judgment " in some sense or other. 

But the consequences of sin are not all of one 
kind. Some of them are merely physical. The 
drunkard loses the power of muscular control, and 
becomes habitually unsteady. His face as well as 
his action, reveals his weakness, and you know 
him, at sight, a dissipated man. Doubtless every 
sin makes its mark upon the body. This thought 
seems to have been in the mind of the prophet 
Isaiah, in his vivid portrayal of the decadence of 
the Jewish nation : " From the sole of the foot 
even unto the head, there is no soundness in it."* 

Sin has its mental consequences. The drunk- 
ard, glutton, sensualist, loses in greater or less de- 

*Read Is. i, 4-6. 



CONSEQUENCES OF SIN. 21 

gree the powers of memory, reasoning, imagination 
and will ; and also becomes gross in his tastes and 
affections. He is merely a striking example. No 
doubt every sin injures mind as well as body.* 

Sin has its moral consequences. It produces 
in most minds — probably in all — a peculiar suffer- 
ing termed remorse, pain at having sinned, mingled 
with forebodings of the consequences. This is not 
all. The sinful indulgence of any appetite, desire 
or affection, creates or intensifies the disposition to 
such indulgence, and weakens the power to resist 
it. Not a sin so small but it reduces the moral na- 
ture to a lower level. This process may be carried 
on until one loses his power to appreciate the truth 
that would lead him to salvation, and deliberately 
prefers a life of sin to a life of holiness, f 

It is a painful fact that these several consequen- 
ces of sin, remorse excepted, are not confined to the 
person who commits the sin. By example and con- 
tact the sinner poisons his associates. By dimin- 
ishing his power to do the noblest part toward 
others, sin makes him a robber. Sadder still, his 
weaknesses of body, mind and character, are trans- 
mitted to his posterity; for in this sense the iniqui- 
ties of the father are visited upon the children.^ 

*Titus i, 15. fMath. 13, 15. JEx. 20, 5. 



22 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

Not a human being lives who does not suffer from 
the sins of associates and ancestors. By far the 
larger part of human suffering is the result of sin. 

Mournful as are these, which may be called the 
natural consequences of sin, there is another which 
is yet more appalling, and that is the legal conse- 
quence. The just, wise, loving Creator, at once the 
Legislator, Judge and Executive over all his crea- 
tures, has attached a universal penalty to sin ; and 
though he did not consult our preference, any more 
than an earthly judge would ask a criminal to 
choose his own sentence, he has very distinctly 
told us what the penalty of transgression is. "The 
wages of sin is death." " The soul that sinneth, it 
shall die."* 

It is important that we know what is meant 
by these expressions. That " die " and " death," 
in these places, do not refer to the death of 
the body, is made very clear by numerous 
Scripture evidences, among which are the 
following : God said to Adam, " In the 
day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely 
die."t Yet Adam lived hundreds of years after his 

*Ez. 18, 4, 20. For the reasons why this cannot now be in- 
cluded among the natural consequences of sin, see chap. V. 

fGen. 2, 18. 



CONSEQUENCES OF SIN. 23 

transgression. Physical death, then, could not 
have been intended, except, perhaps, as an outward 
evidence or a natural consequence of the real pen- 
alty. The terms " die," " dead " and " death " are 
frequently used, as in this case, to denote a spiritu- 
al, not a bodily state. Jesus said, " Let the dead 
bury their dead."* Here the word is evidently 
used once of spiritual and once of bodily death. 
"Ye were dead in trespasses and sins." f "Thou 
hast a name that thou livest and art dead. "J "She 
that liveth in pleasure, is dead while she liveth."|| 
"Hath passed from death unto life."§ "Shall 
save a soul from death." §§ " We know that we 
have passed from death unto life. "ft " He that 
loveth not his brother abide th in death." ft 

The Bible clearly teaches the immortality of the 
soul in the sense of its everlasting duration. |||| The 
above passages have, therefore, no reference to the 
destruction or annihilation of the soul, or the loss 
of conscious existence. John, in speaking of this 
death in its final hopelessness says, " This is the 
second death," f and figuratively describes it as 
being "cast into the lake of fire." Paul defines it 

*Math. 8, 22. fEph. 2, 1. JRev. 3, 1. ||i Tim. 5, 5. gjno. 5 
24. $§Jas. 5, 20. ft 1 Jno. 3, 14. ||||See Appendix D. 
IJRev. 20, 14. 



24 ME LAMB OF GOD. 

in its final form, as " everlasting destruction from 
the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His 
power"* Death, does not mean, then, that the 
powers of thinking, feeling and willing are to 
cease ; but that the soul will be lost to those pre- 
cious comforts, supports, incentives and means, 
which are necessary to regeneration and holiness 
and permanent happiness ; for these are found only 
in union and communion with God Himself. Even 
Cain seems to have had a very clear apprehension 
of the nature of the penalty for sin, as shown in 
his sad, though selfish complaint about his punish- 
ment, when he says to Jehovah, " From thy face 
shall I be hid."f 

Although every consequence of sin to the sin- 
ner, may be regarded as subordinate to, as included 
in, or as issuing from its one specific penalty, yet 
the popular notion that physical death and that 
every sickness, accidental injury, or premature 
death — in short, every form of calamity or suffering 
— is a penalty for sin, and not, in general, a mere 
natural consequence of sin or of its penalty, is at 
once injurious and unscriptural. Nations, cities 
and armies have suffered from famine, pestilence, 
earthquake, fire and sword, as a special, visible pen- 

*2 Thes. i, 9. tGen. 4, 14. 



CONSEQUENCES OF SIN. 25 

alty for particular sins, or for extreme sinfulness. 
The destruction of the antediluvians by the flood,* 
of Sodom and Gomorrah by fire from heaven, f of 
Pharaoh and his hosts by the Red Sea, J of Korah 
and his company by earthquake and fire,§ of the 
hosts of Sennacherib by an angel of the Eord,** 
are all examples of suffering for flagrant sins. Ex- 
amples of similar suffering by individuals, are 
seen in the ejection of Adam and Eve from Para- 
dise,ft the sudden death of Nadab and Abihu,JJ 
the leprosy of Miriam §§ and of Gehazi,*f the ag- 
onizing death of Herod Agrippa,*t the blindness of 
Elymas the sorcerer, *§ the death of Ananias and 
Sapphira.*tt 

An examination of these cases will show that 
the suffering was not a natural consequence of 
transgression or sinfulness, but a direct visitation 
from God, to show His displeasure with sin, and 
His power to punish it. 

But such cases are far from proving that all hu- 
man suffering is penal. In the destruction of cities, 
nations and armies for sin, innocent persons, no 
doubt, often suffered, and those who were right- 

*Gen. 6 and 7. tGen. 19, 24-25. JEx. 14, 24-28. £Num. 16, 
31-35. **2 Ki. 19, 25. ttGen. 3. JJLev. 10, 1-2. §§Num. 
12, 10. *f2 Ki. 5. 27. *JActs 12, 23. *£Acts 13, 11. *tfActs 
5, 1-10. 



26 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

eous. The suffering of these could not have been 
penal. But even those special visitations which 
are most clearly penal, ought not to be confounded, 
in our minds, with the final and universal doom of 
the ungodly, which the Bible repeatedly calls 
u death," which Jesus calls "eternal punishment,"* 
" the condemnation of hell,"t "outer darkness,"! 
" the fire that never shall be quenched ;"§ which 
Daniel calls " shame and everlasting contempt ;"** 
and which Paul describes as "everlasting destruc- 
tion from the presence of God and from the glory 
of His power." *f 

No wonder that Christ and His apostles labored 
so earnestly to turn men from sin ; for they dis- 
tinguished clearly between that which is temporal 
and that which is eternal, and between all forms of 
suffering which may naturally result from one's 
own sin or that of another, and the one Divinely 
appointed, individual penalty for transgression. 
No wonder that Paul should exclaim, " Knowing 
therefore the terror of the I^ord, we persuade 
men ;"* J or that Peter should say, " I will not be 
negligent to put you in remembrance of these 
things, though ye know them."*§ And no wonder 

*Mat. 25, 46. fMat. 23, 33. JMat. 8, 12. gMk. 9, 43, 45, 48. 
**Dan. 12, 2. *f 2 Thess. 1, 9. *%2 Cor. 5, 11. *§2Pet. 1, 12. 



CONSEQUENCES OF SIN. 2 J 

that the awakened soul cries out, in view of such a 
doom, " What must I do to be saved?" 



It may help us to understand the meaning of 
death as the penalty of sin, the present state of the 
unsaved, and the final and fixed state of those who 
die [physically] in their sins,* to observe a few 
plain natural facts. We say of a man who is totally 
blind, and we may say it truly, without any figure 
of speech, that he is dead to the direct influences of 
light and color. They exert no power over his 
pursuits or his decisions, nor minister to his joy. 
Similarly, the man who is totally deaf, is dead to 
the power of harmony. Men are found who want 
some particular mental power, as that of number. 
Such a man is dead to the splendors and advan- 
tages of mathematics. Occasionally a person is 
found physically and rationally alive, yet morally 
well nigh dead; moral truth being apparently be- 
yond his grasp, and moral principle having no 
power in his conduct. Just so, a man may be phys- 
ically, mentally and morally alive, yet spiritually 
dead, as God declares every unpardoned sinner to be. 
Hence it is that " The natural man receive th not 
the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know 
them, because they are spiritually discerned."! 

*For difierence between this state here and hereafter, see Ap- 
pendix A. fi Cor. 2, 14. 



28 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

It is proper to note that the death here de- 
scribed involves the loss of those lofty and blessed 
relations to God the Creator which are attributed to 
man as at first created. The soul suffering this pen- 
alty no longer enjoys the Divine approval, whatever 
be his outward conduct.* He is no longer in direct 
communion with God,f nor capable of any direct 
knowledge of Him. J In spirit and purpose he is 
contrary to God.§ He enjoys no longer in its tru- 
est, loftiest sense the Divine fatherhood, but is un- 
der that of the Adversary and Deceiver.** He is 
no longer in the Divine image. ft Nor is he capa- 
ble of begetting a pure offspring. J J 

Each of these statements the reader can fully 
confirm by an examination of the accompanying 
references, and by observing that the restoration of 
man to life and to the lofty relations involved in it, 
is the great purpose and burden of the Gospel. 

; T/ph. 2, 3. fi Cor. 2, 14. JJohn 17, 3. §Rom. 3, 9-19. **John 
8, 42, 44 ; 2 Cor. 6. 17-18. tt Rom - 8, 29; 2 Cor. 3, 18 ; Col. 3, 
10. %%k natural and necessary inference from what precedes; 
but see also Ex. 20. 5. 



IN ADAM ALL DIE. 29 

CHAPTER IV. 

IN ADAM ALX DIE. 

"And so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." 

— Rom. 5, 12. 

T^HE positive statement of the inspired apostle that 
«*• death passed upon all men, is but the logical 
conclusion from the premises contained in the head- 
ings of the two preceding chapters. "In Adam 
All Die."f The awful gloom in which our first 
parents passed out of Paradise, must have been 
deepened by the thought that it was to be the in- 
heritance of their posterity. A fallen race ! Ra- 
tional indeed, but not spiritual; intelligent, but un- 
loving and unbelieving ; aspiring proudly, but not 
heavenward ; " raging waves of the sea, foaming 
out their own shame, wandering stars, to whom is 
reserved the blackness of darkness forever. "J * 

Yesterday their souls had delighted in the 
splendors and harmonies of the universe. Their 
hearts had thrilled with "joy unspeakable and full 

-fi Cor. 15, 22. JJude. 13. 

*The reader must bear in mind that the picture here drawn is 
that of fallen man, as he must have been, under the penalty 
of spiritual death, had no 'provision been made for changing 
his state. We shall see, later, in what respects this state has 
been changed by the suffering of Christ. 



30 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

of glory ;" for they were in and of the kingdom of 
God. To-day they are translated into another king- 
dom — "sold nnder sin." Their hearts are changed 
toward God and good. " All the foundations of the 
earth are out of course."* Eden itself is no longer 
restful, beautiful, praise-inspiring. No place shall 
be so where God is, for they love Him no longer. 
The only poor semblance of comfort they shall 
know, will be when God is not in all their thoughts. 

" So He drove out the man."f What a change ! 
Spiritual life is gone, but the rational soul remains, 
a selfish, suffering witness of the stupendous trans- 
formation. When the first clear knowledge of this 
broke upon them, no doubt our first parents sent 
up such a cry of anguish as earth should never wit- 
ness again, save when the Sinless One should 
descend to the same depth of suffering for their 
redemption. 

Mark the sad, sure decline of those whom God 
made in His own image, t First — and upon the 
plane of unsullied spiritual life — comes a bold 
temptation. God, in whom to them was the ful- 
ness of joy, had spoken; and loving obedience was 
bliss. Satan speaks. It is a strange, opposing 
voice: u Ye shall not surely die."§ The begin- 

*Ps. 82, 5. fGen. 3, 24. JGen. 1, 27. £Gen. 3, 4. 



IN ADAM ALX DIE. 3 1 

ning of consent is the listening ear ; therefore take 
heed what ye hear. But might the strange voice 
of the Serpent be true ? Might God's word be in 
some sense at fault ? And with the indulgence of 
such thoughts, holiness, which then as now de- 
pended on unquestioning trust, was forfeited; a sin- 
ward tendency was implanted ; desire was awak- 
ened ; it heightened with contemplation, culmin- 
ated in willful transgression, and man, the rebel, 
was an outcast. 

And so death passed upon all men ? Shall we 
say it ? By the logic of nature, yes ; for the par- 
ent could not transmit to his children what he him- 
self did not possess. The offspring of a beast is a 
beast, not a rational being. The spiritually dead 
could beget "a son in his own likeness,"* that was 
all. The state which came to Adam as the penalty 
of transgression, must therefore be entailed by 
natural law upon his posterity. They must belong 
to the kingdom of darkness and death, not to the 
Divine kingdom of light and life. 

Would the infant, then, who is quite incapable 
of transgression, be included in this kingdom of 
darkness ? How could it be otherwise ? But has 
not God said of penal suffering, " The son shall 

*Gen. 5, 3. 



32 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

not bear the iniquity of the father?"* He has, 
and His word endureth forever. The state of dark- 
ness and separation from God will come to the 
child as hereditary diseases come, by the law of 
natural descent. It will be only his misfortune, 
not his fault To the infant there is no law, for he 
cannot apprehend law ; and " when there is no law, 
sin is not imputed."! His state by nature, though 
identical with that of his fallen parent, will not be 
to him a direct penalty, though he is clearly in- 
cluded in the condemnation of the race. Nor will 
it, though deplorable in the eyes of those who know 
a far better state, be attended with the poignancy 
of a direct penalty. The child has known no other 
state. A person born blind does not suffer like one 
who has become blind. 

Yet in a state of natural blindness, having " fel- 
lowship with the unfruitful works of darkness," 
"hateful and hating one another," "having no 
fear of God before their eyes," "having no hope, 
and without God in the world, "J must Adam and 

*Ez. iS, 20. t Rom - 5i I3« 

JFor fuller interpretation of Ez. 18, 20, see Ch. xvii. 

Note — Whatever be our views of the fatherhood of God (see 
Appendix F. page ), we must not forget that so far as sin, 
its penalty, and the remission of its penalty are concerned, 
He stands in a judicial relation to us, as a righteous Sover- 
eign ; though in His fatherly character, lovingly providing 
for our restoration to His favor. 



IN ADAM AU, DIE. 33 

his posterity be, and in that state remain, as a con- 
sequence of Adam's transgression, unless God's love 
shall intervene to change in some way their state, 
by first changing their relation to His perfect law. 
Has there been such intervention ? 



34 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

CHAPTER V. 

DEAD THROUGH OUR TRESPASSES. 

"And so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." 

— Rom. 5, 12. 

WE have not yet done with this text. We have 
seen how death must naturally have passed 
upon all men, in consequence of Adam's transgres- 
sion, so that it might be truly said, " In Adam all 
die." Yet this is not stated in our text, where the 
reason assigned for death having passed upon all men 
is that " all have sinned."* This makes every man 
responsible for the state of death in which he is as 
-a sinner, and makes that state a direct penalty, vis- 
ited upon every man for his own sin. The ques- 
tion at the close of the preceding chapter, this 
text, therefore, answers clearly and affirmatively. 
There has been an intervention of Divine love to 
change, in some way, the state of the child. 

This is evident for the following reasons : If 
every man has come under the penalty of death for 
his own sin, then before he committed sin he was 
not under the penalty. This must be true, there- 

*For reasons already given, it is clear that this expression can 
not apply to infants, but to the accountable portion of the 
human family. 



DEAD THROUGH OUR TRESPASSES. 35 

fore, of every child before he reaches the years of 
understanding. But was he not in a state of death 
as a natural consequence of Adam's penalty, though 
not suffering it as a direct penalty ? This might 
be true but for one reason. If before the trans- 
gression the child were already in a state of death, 
it is clear that death could not afterwards be awarded 
him as a penalty for transgression, unless he were 
first made alive. If a murderer were sentenced to 
prison for life, he might again commit murder, but 
could not again receive the former punishment, un- 
less the former sentence had been wholly or in part 
remitted. It is, therefore, a necessary inference 
from the text, that before the commission of con- 
scious transgression every child possesses a kind of 
life which he could not inherit by natural law from 
our first ancestor, and which, upon willful trans- 
gression, he forfeits. 

This thought seems to have been in the mind 
of the apostle Paul, when he said of himself; " For 
I was alive without the law once ; but when the 
commandment came, sin revived and I died."* The 
remorse of a tender child upon the occasion of his 
first willful and deliberate disobedience has, no 
doubt, a significance far deeper than most persons 

*Rom. 7, 9, 



36 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

imagine. It marks the sad change from innocence 
to gnilt, and the forfeiture of that life, which, more 
than any outward comforts, had made the rational 
life of the child a life of joy. 

Take now the text which stands at the head of 
this chapter, and read it in connection with the 
one which precedes it in the Bible. " By one man 
sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and 
so death passed upon all men, for that all have 
sinned." We may now clearly see the meaning of 
the apostle to be : 1 — That by Adam's transgres- 
sion death entered into the world — came to Adam 
as a direct penalty, and to his race not as a direct 
penalty but a necessary consequence of his penalty. 
2 — That by some wonderful provision of grace, a 
measure of spiritual life is conferred upon every de- 
scendant of Adam, which elevates it to a state of 
personal accountability respecting its own final 
salvation. 3 — That though the gravest conse- 
quence of Adam's penalty is thus removed, so that 
spiritual death is not entailed as a consequence of 
Adam's sin, yet the physical, mental and moral 
consequences of sin in the parent impart to the 
child such a disposition or tendency to sin, and the 
world furnishes him such i?tcentives to sin, that 
those who reach the years of understanding do, 



DEAD THPvOUGK OUR TRESPASSES. $7 

without exception, transgress the Divine law ; and 
4 — Because of this, their own transgression, they 
come under the same penalty which Adam suffered 
for his transgression. 

When the apostle says to the Ephesians, " Ye 
were by nature the children of wrath, even as oth- 
ers,"* he might mean that, according to natural 
law, and without a special provision of grace, your 
state must have been that of spiritual death ; or he 
might mean, though by grace ye were not, when 
children, in a state of death, yet your natural ten- 
dencies to sin were such that, like others, you 
yielded to temptation and came under Divine con- 
demnation. 

One of these interpretations would be as agree- 
able to the tenor of Scripture teaching as the other ; 
but the latter was evidently in the apostle's mind, 
as shown by the subjoined statement that God, 
" even when we were dead through our trespasses, 
quickened us in Christ."f 

In the considerations now presented, we find 
comfort and hope respecting irresponsible children. 
Yet we must wonder how the righteousness of God, 
by which the entire race was separated from Him, 
could, consistently with His attribute of unchang- 

*Eph. 2, 3. tHpli. 2, 5. 



38 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

ing justice, admit such a provision of grace. Prais- 
ing him for the fact, we will leave the condition of 
little children and their salvation, to resume it at a 
proper time. The case of those who have forfeited 
life and come under death for transgression, is to us 
of greater moment.* 

*It may be well here to note that the great truth brought to 
view in this chapter, and more clearly explained in Chapter 
XVII, seems to have been wholly overlooked by some who 
have, therefore, taught that the present state of all persons 
except the elect, is that of " total depravity , " death, dark- 
ness, sinfulness ; and hence have inferred the condemnation 
of many who die in infancy. See Appendix K, Total De- 
pravity. 



DIFFICULTIES OF THE PROBLEM. 39 



CHAPTER VI. 

DIFFICULTIES OF THE PROBLEM. 

' 'If our sins and our iniquities be upon us, and we pine away 
in them, how should we then live ?" — Ez. 33, 19. 

DARKENED, so that he cannot clearly per- 
ceive the truth ; sinful, so that he willfully 
resists the truth ; condemned so that he could not 
profit by the truth ; the saddest feature in all this 
gloomy picture of fallen man, whether as a mem- 
ber of a condemned race, or as fallen by his own 
transgression, is his helplessness. Dead in sin. 
No wonder that a soul brought in any way to a 
sense of its awful state, should cry out, " How shall 
we then live ? " 

Let us observe particularly some of the consid- 
erations which must lead to this despairing ques- 
tion. 

1 — The punishment inflicted for sin is just. 
"Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?"* 
If just, the condemned cannot demand nor expect a 
remission of any part of their penalty. Inflexible 
justice must be an attribute of God as well as In- 
finite Love. Otherwise the universe must lose 
confidence in its Governor. " Hath He said and 
*Gen. 18, 25. 



40 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

shall He not do it ? Or hath He spoken and shall 
He not make it good ? "* 

2 — Under just sentence as rebels against God, 
we could have no course but to submit to our pun- 
ishment. Every mouth is stopped. If the punish- 
ment is in any degree, or in any sense remitted, 
such remission must be a mere favor on the part of 
God, a free gift of His mercy. But Divine mercy 
cannot set aside Divine justice, nor work an abate- 
ment of it. If it should, it would make Divine 
justice appear to have been unjust ; or else it would 
appear that God had changed his character or His 
purpose. In either case, the universe must lose con- 
fidence in its Governor. His government of moral 
beings certainly requires that He " change not ;"f 
that He be " the same yesterday, to-day and for- 
ever ;"J even if he could possibly be otherwise. 

3 — Even if God knows some way by which He 
may be just and remit our penalty, He cannot do 
so without working a most wonderful change in 
our natures ; for we belong to an adverse kingdom, 
and our nature and all our incentives are opposed 
to Him. This, again, would be only a favor, noth- 
ing that we can claim or demand. Moreover, to 
change us will be impossible without our will ; for 

Num. 23,19. fMal. 3, 6. JHeb. 13, 8. 



DIFFICULTIES OF THE PROBLEM. 4 1 

the unchanging God has given us, as a fixed ele- 
ment of our nature, the powers of choice and voli- 
tion. We are in death because we chose sin with 
death, rather than obedience with life. God will 
certainly demand, if He forgive us, a change in the 
bent of our free will. He must, therefore, furnish 
us incentives to a change of will ; for the kingdom 
of Satan does not furnish such incentives. He 
must come to us on the plane of rational life, for 
spiritual life we have not. He must bring light 
into our darkness, and must give us power to ap- 
prehend light. To lead us to love Him, He must 
address Himself to our self-love. To enable us to 
understand Him, He must speak through such 
things as we can understand. We should need " a 
daysman between us, an interpreter," and he must 
speak with Divine authority. 

4 — But alas ! this is not all. Should God be 
able and willing to do all of this, the master to 
whom we have sold ourselves, will not let us go. 
He will present so many persuasions and threats, fill 
us so with doubt and fear, and with repugnance for 
God, that we shall never finally decide for Him. 
We must not only have had a measure of life to 
make a heavenward desire possible — a momentary 
lifting, at least, of our penalty; and a measure of 



42 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

Divine light as a ground of instruction and hope ; 
but we must be assured of Divine help to detect the 
stratagems and overcome the efforts of our present 
sovereign and father, God's archenemy. We must 
have not only a daysman clothed with Divine au- 
thority, but a Captain clothed with Divine power. 
He must be God, that we may trust Him, and 
man that we may understand Him. 

5 — Yet more. He must afresh set before us God's 
righteous law ; he must give us the plainest assur- 
ance that we may keep it by God's enabling grace. 
He must therefore keep it himself, and that upon 
the pi ane of human infirmity and human environ- 
ment. 

6 — And, finally, we must be assured that, after 
we have with full purpose of heart renounced the 
kingdom of Satan for that of God, our Judge — in 
case we are taken in sin by the sudden craft of the 
enemy, and so merit condemnation — will suspend 
the execution of His righteous law until it is clear 
that we purpose allegiance to another, or until we 
have become indifferent to the claims of God upon 
us. 

Such being the weighty, and in the nature of 
the case the necessary conditions of our deliver- 
ance, " How should we then live ?" Such must 



DIFFICULTIES OF THE PROBLEM. 43 

have been, in substance, the despairing thought of 
our first parents when driven out of Kden, and 
when the possibility of restoration had flashed upon 
them. The question, after reflection, could not 
have been, " What must I do to be saved ?" for evi- 
dently they could do nothing ; but What can God 
do to save me? Before this question angels and 
men may well have stood perplexed. 



The salvation of those who were under just con- 
demnation, must perfectly vindicate Divine justice. 
At the same time it must furnish the sinner a plea. 
It must likewise give some experimental knowl- 
edge of the joys of Life, through which to impart 
some knowledge of Divine law, of sin and its con- 
sequences, of God's will to save, His power to save, 
and His way of salvation. It must restore to per- 
fect sonship, transform into the Divine image, 
bring into conscious communion with God, and in- 
to perfect harmony with His will. It must remove 
all the consequences of sin, whether natural or 
penal ; and from the beginning of this process in 
any individual, it must cover perfectly his irrespon- 
sibility, and must also withhold penalty for com- 
mitted sin until persistence in sin had made repent- 
ance impossible. 



44 THE LAMB OF GOD. 



CHAPTER VII. 

A DIVINE SUGGESTION. 

"And He saw that there was no man, and he wondered that 
there was no intercessor ; therefore His own arm brought 
salvation." — Is. 59, 16. 

f T is now our privilege to consider the wonderful 
* manner in which Divine wisdom has met every 
one of the difficulties of human salvation without 
any abatement of Divine justice, and without de- 
stroying the freedom of the human will. But let it 
be constantly borne in mind that in the character 
of Law-giver, Judge and Executive over all His in- 
telligent creatures — a character in which He is con- 
stantly presented to us in the Scriptures, and in 
which we are necessarily bound to consider Him — 
God could not have been under any obligation to 
provide for man's salvation, whom he had justly 
condemned, and that His provision was, therefore, 
only an act of favor or love, issuing in infinite com- 
passion. 

It is clear that the most difficult feature of this 
intricate problem must be the lifting of the curse 
or penalty ; first as a race-penalty, so that it shall 
not be entailed, and then as a personal penalty from 



A DIVINE SUGGESTION. 45 

those who have incurred it by their own transgres- 
sion. The transformation of character by the im- 
partation of a new nature, must logically come after 
pardon and be conditioned upon it. Chronolog- 
ically the two are, or appear to be, simultaneous. 

If God were merely an arbitrary sovereign, He 
might bestow upon man an unconditional forgive- 
ness. But this would be to raise the rebel to an 
equality with the loyal and trustworthy servant. If 
this shocks our common sense of justice, much 
more is it contrary to the absolute holiness of God. 
It would invade heaven with impurity. It would 
utterly destroy the moral government of the uni- 
verse ; for it would represent the Divine Being to 
His creatures as wanting in practical wisdom and 
love. This ought to be a sufficient answer to the 
impenitent sinner who says, " God made me, He is 
bound to save me." 

The question may then be asked, Could not 
God bestow forgiveness — remission of penalty — up- 
on such sinners as became truly repentant ? This 
may look plausible, but a little thought will show 
it to be quite impossible. Like an unconditional 
forgiveness, it would set Divine mercy in opposi- 
tion to Divine justice, as if, in the bosom of God 



46 THE UMB OP GOD. 

these were contending rather than coincident and 
harmonious emotions. 

The inferior kingdom, to which the soul is ban- 
ished in penalty for transgression, could not furnish 
the needful incentives to repentance, nor any 
ground of hope that such repentance would be ac- 
cepted by the Almighty. These must come, if they 
come at all, from God Himself. If we could con- 
ceive of true repentance and amendment of life as 
possible without a Divine intervention in behalf of 
the transgressor, even then, to offer pardon and life 
upon repentance would be a relaxation of Divine 
justice. But to offer these upon this condition, and 
then furnish gratuitously all the light and all the 
incentives necessary to such repentance, would be to 
acknowledge a lack of justice, wisdom or love in 
having made death the wages of sin. God cannot 
thus impeach, even by implication, His own per- 
fections ; nor can man ask or expect of Him a pro- 
cedure so contrary to all that makes Him an object 
of adoration and love. 

How, then, can God be just and pardon the sin- 
ner, accept him to sonship and crown him with 
everlasting life? Man could not have proposed a 
proper answer. Only God had either the right or 
the wisdom to suggest one. He has done it. He 



A DIVINE SUGGESTION. 47 

lias placed before us a plan wholly unique, and 
adapted to meet every requirement of the case in 
the most perfect manner — a marvel of wisdom, 
power and love. It is salvation by redemption, 
nothing more ; and the thought seems simple 
enough for the faith of a child. But it is redemp- 
tion devised with such consummate wisdom, 
wrought out with such inimitable skill, and reveal- 
ed to the race with such infinite tenderness, as must 
forever challenge the admiration of all worlds. 

May God's blessing rest upon us in our effort to 
apprehend His plan ; first in its 7iature, as displayed 
in God's own record of the race and of His Son, 
and attested by contemporaneous history uninspired; 
and then in its relations to the complex problem of 
human salvation, of which it is the masterly, be- 
cause the Divine solution. 



48 THE LAMB OF GOD. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE SUGGESTION IN SHADOW. 

1 ' Without shedding of blood there is no remission. ' ' — Heb. 9. 22. 

OCARCELY had the transgression of onr first 
^ parents plunged them into the hopeless dark- 
ness of alienation from God, and deprived them of 
the unmeasured joys of Eden, when God revealed 
to them a door of escape from the kingdom and 
power of the Adversary. The references to this 
revelation in Genesis are scanty, contained in a few 
brief passages ; but evidences exist to show that in 
its essential features, the knowledge of the Divine 
plan of salvation, though afterwards obscured by 
the prevailing unbelief and sinfulness, was at first 
very clear and full.* 

In the above text the apostle does not declare a 
new truth, nor one peculiar to Jewish thought. He 
merely states what had been believed from earliest 
times and probably in all nations. But the fact 
that it was a pervading principle of that wonderful 
law which was given to the Israelites through 
Moses, and that it is approvingly quoted and en- 
larged upon by the inspired apostle, sufficiently 

*See Appendix H, "An Early Revelation." 



THE SUGGESTION IN SHADOW. 49 

stamps it with the Divine approval. " No remis- 
sion, " that is, primarily, no removal or abatement 
of the penalty for sin, " without shedding of blood." 
The sacrificial systems of every nation and every 
age, attest most clearly that this singular truth was 
one of the first to appear in the human conscious- 
ness, and one which has commanded the confidence 
of devout men throughout the world's history. The 
cruel and foolish rites which crept into the relig 1 - 
ious systems of nearly all ancient peoples were 
merely human extravagances, which obscured but 
could not wholly conceal the matchless provision 
for human salvation. 

Why no remission without blood ? Because 
God's plan of redemption was redemption by sub- 
stitution. Figuratively it was " eye for eye, tooth 
for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot." Literally 
it was life for life, or more clearly death for death. 
If the spiritually dead is raised to life, it will be 
because another suffers the death penalty in his 
stead, and thus ransoms or redeems him from it. 
This is, in part, the thought which found expres- 
sion in the ancient sacrifices with blood. It is the 
dominant thought in the L,evitical law. It is the 
foundation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

In the light of the early, clear revelation of 



50 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

God's purpose, Abel " brought of the firstlings of 
his flock, and of the fat thereof. And the Lord 
had respect to Abel and to his offering. "* As he 
placed his hands upon the head of the lamb which 
he had brought, and with penitential tears con- 
fessed his transgressions ; as he acknowledged him- 
self to be justly under pain of death, and besought 
the Lord for deliverance ; as he proceeded to 
take the life of that choicest lamb, and asked God 
to accept the innocent for the guilty, and so to 
pardon his iniquity, f he exhibited that intelligent, 
obedient faith by which he " offered unto God a 
more excellent sacrifice than Cain. "J That faith met 
iits reward in a new heart, a changed life, the full 
assurance of hope, and blessed outward prosperity. 

Cain was willing to make an offering to the 
Creator, but not an offering which would symbol- 
ize his own state, or God's chosen means for 
his redemption. His proud rejection of Divine 
authority, wisdom and love, hardened his evil 
heart, made him envious of his brother's joys, and 
resulted in bitter hatred and murder. 

When Cain manifested displeasure that his of- 
fering was not accepted, the loving Divine answer 
indicates the reason for his rejection : "If thou 

*Gen. 4. 4. -fDescription taken from the Levitical law. 
JHeb. 11. 4. 



THE SUGGESTION IN SHADOW. 5 1 

doest well, shalt thou not be accepted ; and if thou 
doest not well, a sin offering coucheth at the door ; 
and its desire shall be to thee, but thou shalt rule 
over it."* 

Later in the world's history, Noah was found 
righteous before God.f One family alone in all the 
world clinging to the blessed truth, the assertion of 
which had cost Abel his life. And when that fam- 
ily emerged from their long confinement in the ark, 
and descended to the plain, the genuine old " preach- 
er of righteousness," as his first business, " builded 
an altar unto the Lord, and took of every clean 
beast and every clean fowl and offered burnt offer- 
ings on the altar. "J 

Still later, Abraham offered, and taught his 
household to offer, sacrifices with blood ; and gave 
to his son Isaac on Mount Moriah that wonderful 
object lesson which taught him with unmistakable 
clearness the doctrine of redemption by substitu- 
tion. § 

Scarcely less striking is the history of Job, who 
was wont to offer burnt offerings according to the 
number of his sons ; for Job said, " It may be that 
my sons have sinned, and renounced God in their 
hearts."** 

*Gen. 4. 7. See Commentaries of Clark, and others on this 
verse. fGen. 7. 1. JGen. 8. 20. $Gen. 22. 1-14. **Job 1. 5. 



52 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

In the same living faith and under the immedi- 
ate command of God, Moses instituted the passover 
and other typical sacrifices of the ceremonial law. 
The sin-offering so regularly and solemnly sacri- 
ficed,* always denoted a consciousness of sin, a be- 
lief that the wages of sin is death, and that the re- 
mission of this awful penalty could take place only 
by the acceptance on God's part, of the death of an 
innocent victim, instead of the death which had 
been justly visited upon the sinner. The trespass 
offering, on the occasion of particular sins, denoted 

the same. 

Let it be here noted, that these offerings were 
made by the eminently pious, by men who were in 
habitual or frequent communion with God, their 
sacrifices having His evident approval. Associate 
with these important facts the prominence given 
in the Mosaic law to sacrifices with blood, and the 
approving recognition of the same in the prophecies 
and in the New Testament, and there remains no 
doubt that redemption by substitution was God's 
plan of salvation. But we must look much farther 
into this mystery of grace, before we shall discover 
its intrinsic charm, its eternal, unquestionable fit- 
ness for its intended purpose. 

*Lev. 4. 2, 6, 7. fThe burnt offering and the peace offering de- 
noted, respectively, as their leading thought, consecration 
and thanksgiving. 



THE SHADOW NOT THE SUBSTANCE. 53 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE SHADOW NOT THE SUBSTANCE. 

4 'It is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats should take 
away sin." — Heb. 10. 4. 

IN view of what has just been said, here is a 
startling statement. It belongs by its date to 
the Christian dispensation. It affirms that the Jews 
and Gentiles who offered slain beasts* as an atone- 
ment for sin, did not experience a remission of the 
death penalty in virtue of such offerings. 

Had the human race, then, during its first four 
thousand years, followed a delusion ? Or, had God, 
who could not possibly accept the death of mere 
animals as a substitute for the spiritual death of a 
human being, or in other words as a redemption 
price for a lost soul, accepted the spirit in which 
these sacrifices were offered, and so pardoned the 
penitent transgressor ? This is the view taken by 
some ; but it is open to grave objections, as being 
illogical and unscriptural, unless we suppose the 
penitent to have presented his offering as an object- 
ive and positive expression of his own personal 

*NoTE — "Bulls and goats" here denotes animals of every kind 
used as sacrifices. 



54 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

faith in a means of redemption Divinely appointed, 
efficient, and of far greater value than any which 
human hands could offer. 

Did the ancients possess such a faith? Did 
they perform these bloody rites with conscious ref- 
erence to a greater truth which lay beyond ? Let 
them speak for themselves. Isaiah (B. C. 760) rep- 
resents Jehovah as saying, " I delight not in the 
blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats."* 
Like expressions occur in several of the later pro- 
phetic books. f David much earlier (B. C. 1040), 
had said, " Burnt offering and sin offering hast thou 
not required.";]; Even Balak, a gentle king (B. C. 
1450), co temporary with Moses, despairingly ex- 
claims, " Will the Lord be pleased with thousands 
of rams, or with ten thousand rivers of oil ?"§ In 
most instances these and similar expressions may 
have had a local and temporary application ; but 
they are also deeply significant of an enlightened 
consciousness on the great subject of human redemp- 
tion. 

Other expressions indicate the reasons why the 
death of animals could not have redemptive power. 
In the Psalms God is represented as saying, " I will 

*Is. 1. 11. fjer. 6. 20 and 7. 21-23; Amos 5. 21, 22, etc. JPs. 
40. 6. gMicah 6. 7. 



THE SHADOW NOT THE SUBSTANCE. 55 

take no bullock out of thy house, nor he-goats out 
of thy folds ; for every beast of the forest is mine, 
and the cattle upon a thousand hills."* Men could 
not offer to God anything which was not already 
His own, and hence could not redeem themselves 
by sacrifice. Paul seems to have appealed with 
entire confidence to the men of Athens, when he 
says, " God is not worshipped with men's hands, as 
though He needed anything, seeing he giveth to all 
life, and breath, and all things ;"f for wherever the 
idea of a Creator and Preserver of the world was 
entertained, there was also the thought that this 
same Creator must be the real possessor of that 
which He had made. 

It is interesting to note in the records of the 
ancients, the numerous evidences of an uneasy 
longing for an offering that would be wholly satis- 
factory to the Almighty. When sacrifices are 
offered, they must be the best of the flock, without 
blemish.% Balaam required the king of Moab to 
build seven altars, " and he offered a bullock and a 
ram on every altar. "§ The number seven, from 
very early times, denoted completeness. Here, then, 
the number of offerings stood for the fullness of 
repentance, consecration and faith ; and expressed 

*Ps. 50. 8, 9. -\hsXs 17. 25. JLev. 22. 20. gNum. 23. 2, 14, 30. 



56 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

the longing for a perfect expiation. The seven 
offerings of Job for his sons, and the seven offerings 
of his three friends for their own folly,* have, 
doubtless, the same significance. The Jewish " daily 
sacrifice "f may have denoted the same longing, and 
the same restless, painful sense of the insufficiency 
of that which was offered. So may the vast number 
of offerings made by some of the ancient kings. J 

It is not uncommon to attribute whatever of 
clearness there is in relation to this subject in the 
Old Testament, to a sudden and immediate inspira- 
tion, under whose influence the prophets spoke 
better than they knew. Is it not more reasonable 
that most of their lofty and singularly harmonious 
teachings respecting the way of salvation were 
merely inspired utterances of beliefs common to 
those who lived in communion with God, among 
whom these beliefs were the subject of frequent 
conversation ? There are strong reasons for answer- 
ing this question in the affirmative. In the next 
chapter will be given a conclusive proof of a very 
early and wide-spread belief that " it is not possible 
that the blood of bulls and of goats should take 
away sin." 

*Job 42. 8. |Bx. 29. 38, 42. JI. Ki. 8. 63; II. Chr. 15. 11. 



GOD MUST UNDERTAKE. 57 

CHAPTER X. 

GOD MUST UNDERTAKE. 

*' None of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give 
to God a ransom for him. ' ' — Ps. 49. 7. 

THE conviction of the devout men of ancient 
times that the death of an animal could not 
be accepted as an equivalent for the spiritual death 
of a human being, is shown by the fact that it was 
not accepted in atonement for murder, or as an 
equivalent for physical death.* In that case noth- 
ing which a man possessed could be received in 
expiation for his sin. But it is, if possible, more 
clearly shown by the final resort to human sacrifices. 
This was strictly forbidden by Jehovah, and was not 
practiced by those who lived in communion with 
Him ; but it was, and yet is, practiced by heathen 
nations. That the purpose of these sacrifices, in the 
minds of those who offered them, was immunity 
from the just and ultimate penalty of sin, by sub- 
stitution, is shown by the statements of heathen 
writers, one of which it may be well to quote. It 
is from Caesar's commentaries on the Gallic war, 
and is doubtless familiar to many. The writer 
says (Book VI., chap. 16), " Every Gallic tribe is 
much devoted to the practices of religion ; and 

*Ex. 21. 12, 14; Lev. 24. 17. 



58 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

hence those who are affected with severe diseases, 
and those who engage in battles or in dangers, 
either immolate human beings as victims, or offer 
themselves to be immolated, * * because they 
judge that they cannot reconcile the immortal gods 
unless for the life of a human being the life of a 
human being is given." This passage shows a rec- 
ognition, even in the darkened heathen mind, of 
the Divine principle of substitution, and at the 
same time a belief of the insufficiency of animal 
sacrifices. 

Turn now to the earnest inquiry of Balak, 
uttered fourteen centuries earlier, and observe how 
his thought rises to the suggestion of human sacri- 
fices. " Wherewith shall I come before the Iyord, 
and bow myself before the high God ? Shall I come 
before Him with burnt offerings, with calves of a 
year old ? Will the Lord be pleased with thous- 
ands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil ? 
Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the 
fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?"* 

" Calves of a year old," though without blem- 
ish, he passes by as wholly insufficient. " Thous- 
ands of rams " would still be inadequate. What 
else can be thought of? His own cherished child, 

*Micah. 6. 6, 7. 



GOD MUST UNDERTAKE. 59 

his u first-born." But even this the prophet passes 
by as insufficient, for he is speaking by Divine in- 
spiration. He has heard proposed all that any man 
could propose. He sees that it is impossible for a 
man to procure his own redemption, or that of an- 
other ; and he insists that the redemption must be 
provided by God Himself : for so we may interpret 
his answer : " God hath shown thee, O man, what is 
good ; and what doth the Lord require of thee but 
to do justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly 
with thy God."* As if he had said, L,eave to God 
that which is beyond thy own wisdom and power, 
and which is the subject of His promise. How like 
this is Abraham's prophetic answer to Isaac, " God 
shall provide Himself a lamb, my son." 

Substitution as the means of redemption, that 
was clear. A pure and innocent being alone could 
be accepted. To devout minds this was also clear. 
The blood of choicest beasts would not suffice : this 
again was clear. Nor yet the blood of one's own 
innocent "first-born." No man, however wealthy 
or powerful or holy, " can by any means redeem his 
brother," not even by dying in his stead. What 
then can be done ? The provision must come from 
God. Only He can find a ransom. 

*Micah 6. 8. 



6o THE LAMB OF GOD. 



CHAPTER XL 

MEN AT THEIR WIT'S END. 
11 For the redemption of their soul is precious." — Ps. 49, 8. 
' I ^HUS, in the light of Divine inspiration, reasoned 
* the ancients. Accepting fully that " the wages 
of sin is death ;" " that all men have sinned," " and 
so death passed upon all men ;" that this death is 
not merely physical but spiritual death — " dark- 
ness," estrangement "from the presence of God and 
from the glory of His power ;" that salvation from 
such a state could come from God only, and only 
as a favor ; that to meet all the requirements of 
Divine justice, to preserve the moral government 
of the universe and the rights of all moral beings, 
God had ordained one means of salvation for fallen 
man, redemption by substitution ; accepting also 
that there could be no remission without shedding 
of blood, and that neither the blood of beasts nor 
that of man could be a redemption price for a lost 
soul, they looked to God alone to provide a sacri- 
fice or offering which should have the necessary 
value. 

Between a beast and even the most sinful man, 
was an immense difference — a difference not only 



MEN AT THEIR WIT'S END. 6 1 

in degree but in kind. The sheep, ox or goat, had 
not a rational soul. Its wisest actions were scarcely 
so much as a mimicry of reason or conscience. 
Moreover, it had not illimitable duration. Its ex- 
istence ceased with its breath. Its death agony 
was but physical and momentary. How could the 
death of such a creature be accepted as an equiva- 
lent for the awful, enduring penalty for sin ? The 
redemption price must accord with the penalty in 
kind, and equal it in degree.* The substitute 
must, therefore, be a rational, immortal being. 
Hence the intelligent, though misapplied, sugges- 
tion of a human sacrifice. 

But this thought has its difficulties. Humanity 
might discover them, but could not rise above them. 
A sinner, though he should give his natural life for 
another, could not thus take the place of that other 
before the law — could not assume his penalty — be- 
cause he is already under the same penalty. He 
has no spiritual life to offer up that his fellow 
might be restored to spiritual life : and the offering 
of the natural life could not atone for sin, natural 
death not being the penalty for sin, but at the most 
only a consequence, or a minor part of that 
penalty. A human being, to be accepted as an of- 

*Is. 53- 4, 5- 



62 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

fering, must have a spiritual life to offer, aud must 
therefore be holy. Such and so precious must be 
the ransom of a soul. If such a one could give up 
his spiritual life, receiving in its stead the endur- 
ing sorrows of spiritual death that another might 
receive life, this and nothing less would truly vin- 
dicate Divine justice. True, the kingdom of 
Heaven would not gain a soul, except by the loss 
of one ; because, from the nature of the penalty, 
one could not bear the penalties of two. Still for 
one this would be an equitable offering. But we 
are here met by three stubborn difficulties, i — 
How could a redemption like this begin in a race 
every member of which was already in a state of 
death ? For, apart from the Divine plan of redemp- 
tion, this must have been the condition of every 
human being since the fall of Adam. And how 
could such a redemption be extended, if it were be- 
gun ? 2 — Again, if by some means or other a por- 
tion of the race were made holy, or had remained 
holy, and a holy man were offered for an unholy, he 
must be a voluntary offering ; nay, more, he must 
lay down his own life, shed his own blood. Other- 
wise, the offering would be murder, and would 
prove the offerer criminal in the extreme and desti- 
tute of that humble repentance without which no 



MEN AT THEIR WIT'S END. 63 

offering could be accepted. 3 — But further, God has 
put the offering of one human being for another 
out of the question, by so constituting man that 
the death of the body does not involve the death of 
the soul. Still less can it affect the spiritual life 
of a soul in possession of that life. The offering of 
a holy man for an unholy would hence be power- 
less as a ransom. 

Evidently, Balak's question, " Shall I give my 
first-born for my transgression ?" and David's asser- 
tion, " None of them can by any means redeem his 
brother," mark the climax of human suggestion, 
and the despair of human effort respecting the all- 
important subject of human salvation. 



64 THE LAMB OF GOD. 



CHAPTER XII. 

AU, THE PROPHETS. 
•'What saiththe Scripture ?"— Rom. 4, 3. 

A A EANWHILE the Holy Ghost* was witness- 
* ' * ing in every agef of a Divine provision yet 
to be made perfect, and directing the faith of the 
humble seeker after salvation to that provision. J 
To this refers God's statement in Genesis, that the 
seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's 
head;§ Enoch's vision, " Behold the Lord cometh 
with ten thousand of his saints ;"** the prophecy 
of Abraham, " God shall provide Himself a lamb;"tf 
and Jacob's prophecy, " The scepter shall not depart 
from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between His feet, 
until Shiloh come, and to Him shall the gathering 
of the people be." J % 

Of that coming Savior Balaam says, " I shall 
see Him but not now, I shall behold Him but not 
nigh ;"§§ Job cries out joyously, " I know that my 
Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the 
latter day upon the earth ;"*f Moses says, "A 
prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you 

*2 Pet. 1, 21. fHeb. n. JActs 10, 43. gGen. 3, 15; Gal. 3, 

16. **Jude. 14. ffGen. 22, 8. JJGen. 49, 10. ^Num. 24, 

17. *|Job 19, 25. 



ALL THE PROPHETS. 65 

of your brethren, like unto me ; Him shall ye hear 
in all things, whatsoever He shall say unto you ; 
and it shall come to pass, that every soul which will 
not hear that prophet, shall be destroyed from 
among the people."* " To Him give all the proph- 
ets witness, that through His name whosoever 
believeth on Him shall receive remission of sins."f 

Prophecy sets forth clearly that this Redeemer 
is God. J Not only is it true that no other can 
redeem us from the penalty of sin, but God Himself 
will do it. The provision made will have, there- 
fore, an infinite value in it. One can " trust and 
not be afraid," if the L,ord Jehovah is become his 
salvation. § Whatever conditions the sinner may 
be required to fulfill on his part,** he can perform 
with the most perfect confidence ; for a Divine 
Redeemer will be " able to save to the uttermost, "ft 

But prophecy also clearly attributes to this 
wonderful Redeemer a human nature : " The seed 
of Abraham ;"J % " A man of sorrows and acquainted 
with grief; § § " Numbered with the transgressors. "*f 

And prophecy declares Him to be God tf;z^n:an, 
in mysterious and wonderful union. "A virgin 
shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call His 

*Acts 3. 22. fActs 10. 43. IPs. 19. 14; 78. 35; is. 41. 14; 43. 
14; etc. gls. 12. 2. **Acts 20. 21. fJHeb. 7. 25. JtGen. 
26. 4, etc. ggls. 53- 3- *fls- 53- 12. 



66 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

name Immanuel,"* (God with us). " Unto us a 
child is born, unto us a son is given ; and the gov- 
ernment shall be upon his shoulder ; and his name 
shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty 
God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of 
Peace."f " The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, 
and the power of the Highest shall overshadow 
thee ; therefore that holy thing that shall be born 
of thee, shall be called The Son of God. "J Thus 
u God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made 
under the law, to redeem them that were under the 
law, that we might receive the adoption of sons."§ * 
In this Son of God, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, 
'Center all the prophecies and allusions of the Old 
Testament, respecting a Redeemer, a Savior, a 
Deliverer, a Messiah, at once God and man. To 
Him point all the types of the law respecting atone- 
ment, propitiation, substitution, forgiveness, cleans- 
ing, salvation, life from the dead. In Him are 
fulfilled all those wonderful conceptions of character 
and conduct which had found expression in the law 
and in the writings of holy men of old, and a partial 
— never a complete — exemplification in good men's 
lives. 

*Is. 7. 14. fls. 9. 6. JLu. 1. 35. gGal. 4. 4, 5. *See App. F. 
on Divine Fatherhood. 



MX, THE PROPHETS. 67 

The character of Jesus is a perfect model. No 
philosopher or poet, however holy his life or however 
lofty his conceptions, has been able to suggest an 
improvement or shall be ; for Jesus of Nazareth was 
God " manifest in the flesh."* By Him the devout 
inquirer may learn precisely what God would do if 
He were a man ; for he may learn precisely what 
God did in the form and character and limitations 
of manhood, f It is therefore eminently proper to 
take Jesus as our pattern in character and conduct. 
But it should be remembered that no imitation of 
Christ can constitute salvation. The closest imita- 
tion of life is not life. " I am come that they might 
have life. "J 

The moral teachings of Jesus are without a par- 
allel. "Never man spake like this man."§ No 
man can add to His teachings or take from them 
without reducing their value. The doctrines pro- 
pounded by Christ should therefore be reverently 
studied by every seeker after righteousness and 
every well-wisher of humanity. But alas ! the un- 
saved can follow such teachings in the letter only 
— not in the spirit. Death cannot apprehend life. 
To the natural man the things of the Spirit of God 
are foolishness, " neither can he know them, because 

*I. Tim. 2. 16. tPhil' 2 - 7- JJno. 10. 10. $John 7. 46. 



68 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

they are spiritually discerned."* To appreciate or 
practice those sublime precepts except in their rudi- 
ments and in a formal manner, one must first be 
conformed to the image of the Son by the imparta- 
tion of a kindred life or nature. 

The example and the teachings of Jesus per- 
fectly corroborate and supplement each other. The 
study of both is indispensable to a Christ-like per- 
fection. But intense study of these models and an 
earnest effort to exemplify them, may take place in 
one whose secret heart rebels against the funda- 
mental requisition of God for salvation ; even more, 
it may take place because the heart so rebels, and 
seeks this very imitation as a substitute for the 
Divine requirement. The resulting imitation is 
beautiful perhaps in many respects, but hopelessly 
deficient in the most essential particular. Nothing 
truly resembles life but life. A painter admires a 
stately maple, and puts it on canvas. The form 
and colorings seem exquisitely perfect. But out by 
the pathway is a slender maple twig, brushed and 
scarred by those who pass. Which of the two, the 
twig or the picture, most resembles the tree which 
evoked the artist's admiration ? Not the picture, 
certainly, for in it there is not the possibility of the 

*2 Cor. 2. 14. 



AU, THE PROPHETS. 69 

leafage, fruitage, and dimensions of its stately orig- 
inal ; while in the twig are all of these ; for it has 
life, and the same kind of life. 

Now suppose that this painter wished that, in- 
stead of producing something that looked like a 
tree, he himself might be like that tree. He would 
see that between him and it there is a great gulf 
fixed. It would certainly require a miracle to 
change his life to its life, and impart to him the 
power of unfolding its perfections, albeit those per- 
fections are far inferior to his own. Still more, 
then, must the natural man who would be like 
Christ, undergo the miracle of transformation, "be 
born from above." " If any man be in Christ, he 
is a new creature"* " Not new works done," said 
Luther, "but a new man to do them ;" for Luther 
had caught the key-note of the gospel, which is 
regeneration. " Ye must be born again, "f 

[When John says, " He that doeth righteous- 
ness is righteous," J he is not asserting that doing 
righteousness makes one righteous, but that right- 
eousness is done only by him who is righteous ; a 
statement in harmony with that of the preceding 
verse, " Whosoever abide th in Him sinneth not."§] 

To see how the infinite Christ has provided for 
*2 Cor. 5. 17. fjohn 3. 7. |i John 3. 7. \\ John 3. 6. 



70 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

this singular and amazing transformation ; how he 
becomes to us not only a pattern and a lawgiver, 
but an actual Savior ; how he saves us not only 
from possible sins, but from the penalty of commit- 
ted sins ; how he brings us from darkness to light, 
from the power of Satan unto God ,* from death to 
life, is the object of our inquiry. 

Lord, as we reverently seek to descend to the 
depths of this mystery — not as hidden among thy 
secret things, but as it has pleased thee to reveal it 
in the record of thy Son — sustain and direct us, 
that we may " show forth the praises of Him who 
hath called [us] out of darkness into His marvel- 
ous light." 

*Acts 26. 18. 



CLEAR LIGHT ON THE PROBLEM. 7 1 

CHAPTER XIII. 

CLEAR LIGHT ON THE PROBLEM. 

ct We see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for 
the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor, that 
He by the grace of God should taste death for every man." 

— Heb. 2. 9. 

WE are nearing the solution of the great prob- 
lem of the ages. The death penalty un- 
der which the responsible but unbelieving por- 
tion of the human race are groaning, was inflicted 
by God. It was therefore absolutely just. It will 
therefore never be revoked. It may be — it will be 
— borne by another. The Just will suffer for the 
unjust, that the suffering may have redemptive 
value. The Infinite will suffer for the finite, that 
the suffering may be " for the whole world."* 

The Son of God, in His regal state, could not suf- 
fer death. Satan had fallen from heaven ; and in 
all its wide domain there lingered not one to whom 
it could occur to condemn the Just, or utter one 
word against Jehovah. Should the Son descend to 
the estate of holy angels, even here would be per- 
fect safety ; for they are in such harmony with 
God, that they do always behold the face of the 

*i Jno. 2. 2. 



72 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

Father. To be our Redeemer, then, the Son must 
leave the glory which He had with the Father be- 
fore the world was, and present Himself in this 
world of sin, temptation, suffering and death. He 
was therefore u made in the likeness of men,"* " a 
little lower than the angels." This, however, was 
not the only reason why Christ came to earth. 
The earth was the abode of the race which He 
came to redeem. It was essential that He teach 
that race how to live acceptably to God, and that, 
in fashion as a man, He keep perfectly the Divine 
law, to prove to them that it may be kept. His 
coming was, therefore, essential to a perfect media- 
tion. Upon the sin-cursed earth, where already 
holy men had sealed their testimony with their 
blood, f and wicked men had offered insult to 
angels, J Jehovah Himself appears for the suffering 
of death. § Miracle of miracles ! What a change ! 
Incomprehensible yet real ? The crowning wonder 
of the universe ! The one hope of a fallen world ! 
Some persons have suggested that the incarna- 
tion would have taken place if sin had not entered 
into the world. Such a suggestion seems to be 
wholly gratuitous, and quite opposed to the plain 

*Phil. 2. 7. fHeb. 11. 37. JGen. 19. $See Appendix I, Divine 
Passibility. 



CLEAR LIGHT ON THE PROBLEM. J$ 

teachings of the Scriptures. " Ye know that He 
was manifested to take away our sins."* " For this 
purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He 
might destroy the works of the devil, "f " Now 
once in the end of the world hath He appeared, to 
put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. "J " Jesus 
Christ came into the world to save sinners. "§ 

The perfect life and the inimitable precepts of 
Jesus were to be of inestimable value in persuading 
men to seek life eternal. They were also to be a 
mighty power for the unfolding of that life when 
obtained. But it required the death of Jesus to pro- 
cure that life, or the possibility of it, to any mem- 
ber of our fallen race. 

" Christ died for the ungodly."* f " God com- 
mendeth His love toward us in that while we were 
yet sinners, Christ died for us."* J " We were re- 
conciled to God by the death of His Son."*§ 
w Ye were . redeemed ... by the precious 
blood of Christ."** " Christ our passover is sacri- 
ficed for us."ft "This is my blood of the new 
testament, which is shed for many for the remission 
of sins." % \ Thus, and in various other ways, do 
the Holy Scriptures declare, that not without the 

*l Jno. 3.5. fi Jno. 3. 8. JHeb. 9. 26. \i Tim. 1. 15. 
*tRom. 5. 6. *tRom. 5. 8. *lRom. 5. 15. **i Pet. 1. 18, 19. 
tfi Cor. 5. 7. {{Mat. 26. 28. 



74 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

death of Christ for us can we hope for forgiveness 
and salvation. 

The death of Jesus Christ was not, in its true 
significance, the death of a martyr. Even if the 
narrative indicates that the death was inflicted for 
certain utterances which Jesus refused to retract, 
still it is distinguished in the plainest possible 
manner from mere martyrdom. 

i — The language used of Jesus' death, is no- 
where used of the death of martyrs. The Bible 
speaks often of holy men who were put to death by 
their unbelieving brethren ; but it nowhere says 
that they — not even the whole army of them — died 
for the ungodly ; that " we were reconciled ta 
God" by their death; that we "were redeemed" 
by their "precious blood ;" that they were " our 
passover, sacrificed for us ;" that their blood is 
the " blood of the New Covenant ;" or that their 
blood was " shed for the remission of sins" Yet 
these and numerous expressions of like import are 
applied to the death of Jesus Christ. 

Our Savior Himself did not speak of His life as 
that of a mere teacher and exemplar, nor of His 
death as that of a martyr. " I give unto them 
eternal life ; and they shall never perish, neither 



CLEAR LIGHT ON THE PROBLEM. 75 

shall any man pluck them out of my hand."* " I 
am the living bread which came down from heaven; 
if any man eat of this bread, he shall life forever ; 
and the bread that I will give, is my flesh, which I 
will give for the life of the world, "f " My flesh is 
meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed."}: 
What man, however holy his life, however exalted 
his teachings, however courageous his spirit in an- 
ticipation of dying for the truth, has ever dared to 
utter words like these ? If Jesus Christ is entitled 
to our confidence as a moral teacher and character- 
pattern, we must expect Him to utter nothing be- 
yond the truth when speaking of Himself. Yet 
His own testimony, like that of the prophets and 
apostles, exalts the purpose and value of His death 
above that of a mere martyr as far as the heavens 
are higher than the earth. 

2 — The behavior of Jesus also attests that He 
was not a mere martyr. Why the awful agony in 
the garden? Why the "sweat as it were great 
drops of blood falling down to the ground ?"§ 
Why does he faint beneath the weight of His cross ? 
Why does he not meet death with the triumphant 
gladness of Paul, or the trustful fortitude of Poly- 
carp, or at least with the stoical composure of Soc- 

*John 10. 28. fjohn 6. 51. jjohn 6. 55. $L,u. 22. 44. 



76 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

rates ? The answer is plain, and no other answer 
meets the case at all. His was not the dread of 
mere physical death ; for then he would have in- 
validated His own sublime maxim : " Be not afraid 
of them that kill the body, and after that have no 
more that they can do."* He was troubled in spiritf 
in anticipation and foretaste of the deeper, darker 
anguish of that hour in which His soul should 
be made an offering for sin ;J in which He should 
thus suffer as the innocent, voluntary, Divine vic- 
tim, " the Lamb of God" whose death alone could 
effect the redemption of lost souls. 

Jesus alone had the honor of being able and 
willing to suffer for our sakes an agony of spirit 
which humanity can but feebly portray or imagine; 
which, indeed, no human being can ever suffer in 
like degree nor for a like purpose, though the 
finally impenitent must suffer it in kind. Only 
the infinite Christ could and did " taste death for 
every man." " Wherefore God hath highly exalted 
Him, and given him a name that is above every 
name ; that at the name of Jesus every knee should 
bow, of things in heaven, and of things in earth, 
and of things under the earth ; and that every 
tongue should confess that he is Lord, to the glory 

"*L,u. 12. 4. tJ no - I2 - 2 7i I 3' 2l ' tl s > 53- IO « 



CLEAR LIGHT ON THE PROBLEM. J? 

of God the Father."* The precise nature of that 
suffering, and something of its intensity and its 
value, we shall learn as we pursue the record. 

*Phil. 2. 9-1 1. 



78 THE LAMB OF GOD. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE PREPARATION. 
*' This is your hour and the power of darkness." — Lu. 22. 53. 

NOTHING more clearly attests trie depravity 
of trie human race, than its hostility to the 
pure and perfect Jesus of Nazareth. In the nation 
which had given to the world its most exalted con- 
ceptions of God and of man, of religion and of 
morality,* the Savior of men, God manifest in the 
flesh, is mocked, scourged, CRUCIFIED, at the 
demand of the chief priests and elders and scribes.^ 
"Had they known, they would not have cruci- 
fied the Eord of glory. "J But why did they not 
know ? They had the light of history, and proph- 
ecy, and experience, and should have passed every 
other nation and every preceding age in the wisdom 
that comes from the fear of the Lord. Yet, with 
means of enlightenment then unknown to any other 
generation or people, " this people's heart is waxed 
gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their 
eyes they have closed ; lest at any time they should 
see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and 
should understand with their hearts, and should be 

*Ps. 147. 20; Rom. 3. 12; Deut. 4. 32-37. f^rk *4- 43 J ^ at - 
26. 59. %i Cor. 2. 8. 



THE PREPARATION. 79 

converted, and I should heal them."* They might 
have known. Ignorance, so far from excusing them, 
was the crowning proof of their crowning sinful- 
ness. And therefore " the Holy One and the Just " 
could say, " That upon you may come all the right- 
eous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of 
righteous Abel to the blood of Zacharias."f " How 
often would I have gathered thy children together 
* * but ye would not."t 

They were now prepared to deny the Holy One. 
They had become the fit instruments of Satan for 
enacting the most dark and cruel of tragedies. 
" Hereafter I will not talk much with you," said 
Jesus to His disciples, " for the prince of this world 
cometh, and hath nothing in me."§ On a former 
occasion He had said to the Jewish leaders, " Ye 
are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your 
father ye will do."** That word was about to 
receive fullest confirmation. 

At the last supper, " the Passover, a feast of the 
Jews," Jesus exclaimed to His chosen twelve, " One 
of you shall betray me. "ft Sad and wonders tricken, 
each asks the question, "L,ord, is it I?" J J Jesus 
replies, " He it is to whom I shall give the sop when 
I have dipped it. And He gave it to Judas Isca- 

*Mat. 13. 15. fMat. 23. 35. JMat. 23. 37. $Jno. 14. 30. **Jno. 
8. 44. tfMat. 26. 21. JJMk. 14. 19. 



80 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

riot."* "And after the sop Satan entered into 
him."f Judas at this moment yields his last 
scruple, consents fully to the dark purpose which 
had hitherto haunted him only as a temptation, and 
the adversary takes full possession of his powers. 
Presently, he shall see what he has done, and in an 
agony of horror go out and hang himself ; but at 
this hour his mind is filled with plausible excuses 
for the awful crime of betraying the innocent 
blood. 

He bargains away his Lord for thirty pieces of 
silver.J He plans the capture. § He leads "a 
great multitude with swords and staves from the 
chief priests and the scribes and the elders."** In 
the garden of Gethsemane, hallowed by many an 
hour of sweetest intercourse between Jesus and His 
followers, ft the malignant crowd attempt to arrest 
the sinless One. As He spake to them, such a power 
came over them that they "went backward and 
fell to the ground."J J But this is their hour. Again 
they rally and make Him their prisoner. They 
have chosen the night, for they feared the people. § § 
Even in this extremely literal sense, they are acting 
under the power of darkness. Their enormous guilt 
shuns the light. Even the council must convene 

*Jno. 13. 26. fJ no - I 3« 2 7- JMat. 26. 14. §Mat. 26. 16. **Mk. 
14. 43. ttJ no - l8 « 2 - tJJ no - l8 - 6 - §§Lu. 22. 6. 



THE PREPARATION. 8 1 

in the night-time. The decision reached will not 
be legally binding, but it can be easily ratified after 
sunrise.* False witnesses appear, but there is no> 
agreement in their testimony, f " At the last came: 
two false witnesses and said, This fellow said, I 
am able to destroy the temple of God, and to build 
it in three days."t There was nothing in such tes- 
timony to prove a man a criminal. No wonder that 
"Jesus held His peace." Baffled, the High Priest 
puts a significant question : " Art thou the Christ, 
the Son of the Blessed?" " And Jesus said, I am ; 
and ye shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right 
hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven. 
Then the High Priest rent his clothes, and saith, 
What need we any further witness? Ye have 
heard the blasphemy ; what think ye ? And they 
all condemned Him to be guilty of death." § Such 
was the trial. " And some began to spit upon Him, 
and to cover His face, and to buffet Him, and to 
say unto Him, Prophesy : and the servants did 
strike Him with the palms of their hands."** 

He is sent to Pilate. The Roman governor 
tries again and again to release Him. " I find no 
fault in Him." But the clamor of Jewish malice 
prevails. Washing his hands before them all, and 

*Lu. 22. 66. fMk. 14. 56. {Mat. 26. 60. gMk. 14. 61-64. 
**Mk. 14. 65. 



82 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

exclaiming, " I am innocent of the blood of this 
just person,"* the heathen ruler nevertheless gives 
sentence "that it should be as they required, "f Jesus 
then having endured the scourging, the smiting, 
the spitting, the vulgar mockery, is led forth TO BE 
crucified. As if to link His name with infamy, 
two criminals are crucified with Him. The soldiers 
mock His thirst with vinegar ; and the priests 
revile Him, wagging their heads. " He saved 
others," they say, " Himself He cannot save." " If 
thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross." 
" Thou that destroyest the temple and buildest it in 
three days, save thyself." Even the poor thief who 
hangs beside Him, joins in the expression of scorn. 

Yet this is Jesus, the teacher and prophet, who 
for three years has exposed Himself to hardship and 
peril and incessant toil, for the sole purpose of 
bringing good to men. Monstrous cruelty ! No 
reasoning can palliate it. " We will not have this 
man to reign over us." They knew that He was a 
teacher come from God ;J yet through envy they 
delivered Him. § 

Why did not Divine L,ove protect the innocent ? 
Because sin was now to appear in all its hideous- 
ness ; human nature in all its vileness. The vivid 

*Mat. 27. 24. fLu. 2 3- 2 4- jjokn 3. 2. £Mat. 27. 18. 



THE PREPARATION. 83 

contrast between this wanton outrage upon trie 
person of Jesus, and the transparent purity of Jesus' 
life and work, will do much to make sin an object 
of hatred to all considerate beings. It must also 
refine and exalt the human conception of patience, 
forbearance, forgiveness — in short, of every one of 
those graces which shone so radiant in the life of the 
Savior. It must also furnish to the world the model 
of true heroism, and a true martyr spirit. Any of 
these three reasons might, perhaps, have been suf- 
ficient to prevent the Father from withholding His 
Son from the trial and the cross. But none of them, 
nor all of them, constitute the reason why Jesus was 
allowed to suffer. 

God sent His Son into the world, " that the 
world through Him might be saved."* We could 
be reconciled to God only by the death of His Son.f 
Jesus, who was as truly God as the Father, said in 
view of His coming agony, " Now is my soul 
troubled ; and what shall I say ? Father, save me 
from this hour ? but for this cause came I unto this 
hour. "J He had come to earth "for the suffering 
of death," § " that through death He might destroy 
him that had the power of death."** He had been 
announced by John, the forerunner, as " the L,amb 

*Jno. 3. 17. -f-Rom. 5. 10. JJno. 12. 27. #Heb. 2. 9. **Heb. 2. 14. 



84 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

of God,"* which meant nothing less than that He 
should " taste death for every man ;"f die for all 
because all were dead ;J justify many by bearing 
their iniquities § (that is, the penalty for their 
iniquities) ; suffer, " the Just for the unjust, that He 
might bring us to God ;"** purchase us " with His 
own blood ;ft u redeem us from all iniquity "{J "by 
the sacrifice of Himself ;§§ be the Divinely ap- 
pointed "propitiation for our sins."*t 

How strangely in this trying hour does the 
character of Jesus contrast with the pride, the cor- 
ruption, the malignity of fallen man — the light of 
heaven with the darkness of hell ! What loving 
condescension that the Holy One should consent to 
be made a little lower than the angels ! What 
astonishing condescension to suffer condemnation, 
insult and crucifixion at the hands of sinful men, 
that He might bring them to God ! But the value 
of the offering of Jesus lies beyond all this, in an 
agony whose cause is hid from outward vision, and 
which marks a condescension infinite beyond ex- 
pression. 



*Jno. i. 27. fHeb. 2. 9. %i Cor. 5. 14. §Is. 53. 11. **i Pet. 
3. 18. ft Acts 20. 28. JJTitus 2. 14. ^Heb. 9. 26. *fJno. 2. 2. 



TKE PERFECT SOLUTION. 85 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE PERFECT SOLUTION. 
11 My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ?" — Mat. 27. 46. 

MOST persons seem to regard trie physical death 
of our Savior as the direct result of the in- 
tense sufferings of crucifixion, and the loss of blood 
occasioned by His wounds ; and many, if not most, 
seem to regard His physical death as the atone- 
ment for our sins. These views, however, fall very 
far short of the truth. 

Great as the agony of crucifixion must have 
been, those who suffered in this way lived for many 
hours, not unfrequently for two or three days, and 
in some instances, it is said, for more than an entire 
week. The Savior's death, however, occurred with- 
in a comparatively very short period, no estimate 
making it more than about six hours. The loss of 
blood from His nail wounds was probably not great, 
and His side was not pierced until after He was 
dead. " Pilate marvelled if He were already dead;"* 
u and when he knew it of the centurion, he gave 
the body to Joseph. "f Again, the physical energy 
of Jesus' last utterances, clearly shows that His 
*Mk. 15. 44. fMk. 15. 45. 



86 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

death did not result from exhaustion. He " cried 
with a loud voice."* We must look then, for some 
other and unusual cause of death. 

Upon this point the Bible has not left us with- 
out very clear evidences. We may first note the 
peculiar form of Jesus own prophecies respecting- 
the death He was about to die. " The good Shep- 
herd giveth His life for the sheep, "t Not merely 
risketh, but "giveth" " I lay down my life for the 
sheep."! This might mean that Jesus would pur- 
sue a course that would lead to His crucifixion, but 
it suggests also the death as directly dependent up- 
on Himself rather than upon His murderers. " I 
lay down my life, that I might take it again. No 
man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. 
I have power to lay it down and I have power to 
take it again." § This statement of the voluntary 
character of His death, may have been adequately 
fulfilled by His allowing Himself to fall into the 
hands of "betrayers and murderers." But it seems 
to mean much more than this. " No man ;" not 
the chief priests, elders and scribes ; not Herod nor 
Pilate ; not the soldiers who crucified Him ; " no 



man." 



Again, the death of Jesus was, from His own 

*Mat. 27. 46, 50; Mk. 15. 37; IvU. 23. 46. fjno. 10. 11. 
JJno. 10. 15. $Jno. 10. 17, 18. 



THF PERFECT SOLUTION. 87 

stand-point, the death of a sacrifice ; Jesus, Him- 
self being the High Priest who offered it. " He 
offered up Himself."* It does not comport with 
the solemn dignity of His mission that the sacri- 
ficial death which was to atone for sin, should be 
inflicted by the malice of corrupt men. These 
were, to all intents, murderers, chiefly because sin 
lies in the intention. But as the High Priest who 
offered the legal sacrifices for the sins of the people 
must be anointed and holy, so Jesus, the great 
Antitype of those sacrifices, must be offered by one 
who was holy. 

What, then, was the immediate cause of His 
death ? In the Garden His agony had been so 
great that " His sweat was, as it were, great drops 
of blood falling down to the ground, "f Persons 
have sometimes been known to give similar evi- 
dence of extreme mental suffering ; but in all such 
cases the physical life is in danger. To Jesus, death 
must have seemed imminent. No nail had yet 
pierced Him ; no scourge had been laid upon Him. 
He had not been delivered to the Gentiles, nor had 
He suffered arrest. Should He die here in the 
Garden, His death might as perfectly atone for sin 
as if it transpired elsewhere. But then several of 

*Heb. 7. 27. t^ u - 22. 44» 



88 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

His own prophecies would be unfulfilled, and some 
of the ancient ones also ; and hence His atonement 
could not appeal as effectively to the faith of men. 
It is believed by many, that this thought prompted 
His thrice repeated prayer, " O my Father, if it be 
possible, let this cup pass from me ; nevertheless 
not as I will, but as thou wilt."* The cup, not of 
death, but of premature death ; death under cir- 
cumstances which would render it so difficult of ex- 
planation, and deprive it, by so much, of its in- 
tended value, because interposing barriers to faith. 
Such an interpretation of Jesus' prayer seems to be 
justified by the remarkable statement of the apostle 
respecting our Savior, "Who," he says, "in the 
days of His flesh, having offered up prayers and 
supplications with strong crying and tears, unto 
Him who was able to save Him from death, and 
having been heard for His godly fear," etc.f To 
die upon the cross as a malefactor would be a bitter 
cup. But to Him who could say, " My meat is do 
the will of Him that sent me, and to finish His 
work," | death in the retirement of the Garden 
would be a cup more bitter, because not perfectly 
fulfilling the Father's declared will. " And there 
appeared unto Him an angel from heaven, 

*Mat 26. 39, 42, 43. -j-Heb. 5. 7. ijno. 4. 34. 



THE PERFECT SOLUTION 89 

strengthening Him."* Under the limitations to 
which He had submitted Himself in order to be- 
come our Mediator, High Priest and Sacrifice, He 
who had upheld all things by the word of his 
powert could now need and receive strength from 
the Father, through the ministry of an angel. 

With physical energy thus renewed, Jesus goes 
forth to accomplish all that was written and unful- 
filled of His expiatory suffering ; to witness the 
fulfilment of His own words respecting the betrayal, 
the mockery, the trial, the condemnation, the de- 
sertion and the crucifixion. " Heaven and earth 
shall pass away, but my word shall not pass 
away."J 

When all these particulars had been accomp. 

*Lu. 22. 43. Many commentators, probably most of them, 
have supposed that the prayer, ' ' Let this cup pass from me, ' ' 
had reference, not to the Gethsemane suffering but to the 
crucifixion itself. They hold that Jesus asked to be delivered 
from it if it were ' ' possible, ' ' but was not so delivered be- 
cause it was not possible to fulfill His mission in any other 
way for the salvation of men. I believe, with them, that no 
other way of salvation was possible ; but I believe also that 
the Savior knew this ; that He had once definitely said that 
He could not ask to be saved from it, and that He did not 
now ask it. The interpretation I have given is adopted by 
many, and seems to me the most consistent with other Scrip- 
ture. That Christ's death was the only possible means of 
our redemption, is sufficiently proved by other evidence. 

fHeb. 1. 3. JMat. 24. 35. 



90 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

lished — then, and not till then — the great High 
Priest offered up Himself. Then, and not till then, 
did He descend to that depth of soul agony, which 
the body could not possibly sustain, which he did 
not seek to escape, and from which even the minis- 
tration of angels would be withheld, because His 
hour had come. He will now " pour out His soul 
unto death."* 

" He is despised and rejected of men."f Is not 
this enough of humiliation ? He endures the tor- 
ture of the cross. Is not this enough of suffering ? 
Sympathy says, Yes ; but truth says, No. Type 
and prophecy answer, No. The awakened soul, 
longing for eternal life, says, No. Divine love in 
the bosom of the Father and the Son, says, No. 
Compared with the suffering which atoned for sin, 
all the pains of scourging, desertion and crucifixion, 
were only as the eddying gust to the destroying 
whirlwind ; as the ripple on the quiet lake to the 
fury of angry surges. 

Martyrdom is painful when, beyond the circle 
of his tormentors, the sufferer can behold the faces 
of sympathizing friends, and catch their words of 
cheer, and their prayers for his support. It is more 
painful when friends have fled, or fear to utter 

*Is. 53. 12. fls. 53. 2. 



THE PERFECT SOLUTION. 91 

' prayers or the promises of Divine comfort. Yet even 
in this extremity martyrs have snng and rejoiced, 
because God was with them, and the comforts of 
His love triumphed over physical suffering. But 
what if this comfort were denied them? How 
must all means of expression fail to portray their 
anguish. 

Men who have resisted the earnest pleadings of 
the Holy Spirit, have writhed in anguish when 
they felt that that Spirit had forever departed. 
What if He withdraw His presence from the saint 
who has loved and trusted Him ? To such a one 
the very thought is appalling. What must it have 
been to the only-begotten Son of God,* who had 
shared from everlasting the delights of the Father's 
house, f who did always the things that pleased 
HimJ whose holiness was absolute, and whose love 
was infinite ? Yet Jesus suffered all this. Not 
only did the sorrows of [physical] death compass 
Him, but the pains of hell gat hold upon Him. § 
The Father's face is hid; and Jesus utters that 
piercing wail of anguish, " My God, my God, why 
hast thou forsaken me ?" He does not say Father ; 
for all the joy denoted by that fond word so often 



*Jno. 3. 16. fjno. 1. 1, 2. JJno. 8. 29. gPs. 86. 13. 



92 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

on His lips, has given way to an overwhelming 
sense of alienation and desertion. 

Hide thy face, O Sun, from such a scene as 
this ! And thou, O Earth, if thou shouldst tremble 
at the presence of the Lord, how shouldst thou now 
quake, when He who has upheld thee by the word 
of His power, descends to this awful extremity of 
suffering ? And thou, O sinful man, what shall I 
say to thee ? Should not thy heart break within 
thee, at the contemplation of that infinite love 
which would suffer thus for thee? Should not 
thine eyes become a fountain of tears whenever 
thou thinkest of such compassion? And should 
not thy soul hate sin, henceforth, with perfect 
hatred, and nee for refuge to the hope which the 
immeasurable suffering of thy Savior sets before 
thee? 

" The pains of hell !" The horrors of abandon- 
ment ! Under the pressure of this tremendous sor- 
row, lovingly encountered for man's redemption, 
the heart of Jesus is literally broken, and His blood 
is shed. Two brief and fervid utterances accom- 
pany or follow this extreme suffering, and He 
yields up the ghost.* 

"*When we speak of Jesus suffering the pains of hell, we do not 
necessarily mean that he endured every variety of suffering 
which the finally impenitent must endure. He could not 



THE PERFECT SOLUTION 93 

To hasten the death of the three who were cru- 
cified, " the soldiers came and brake the legs 
of the first, and of him that was crucified with 
him ; but when they came to Jesus, and saw that 
He was dead already, they brake not His legs ; but 
one of the soldiers pierced His side, and forthwith 
came there out blood and water."* Physiologists 
tell us that this appearance of " blood and water," 
so distinct as to attract the attention of the faith- 
ful but unlearned disciple, indicates the previous 
separation of the vital fluid into its proximate ele- 
ments, coagulum and serum. They tell us further, 
that such separation is not likely to occur within 
the blood vessels, but that it takes place rapidly 
when the blood has passed out of these into other 
cavities. The testimony of John thus indicates to 
us that physical death had resulted from the literal 
breaking of the heart, so that the blood was shed 
into the surrounding cavity. It was the con- 
sequence and effect of the penalty of sin, which 
Jesus, though without sin, took upon Himself for 

have felt remorse for personal guilt, for he had no guilt. Yet 
as one person is sometimes brought into most intense S3*mpa- 
thetic suffering for another, without knowing any reason for 
it, so Jesus may have suffered pangs identical with those of 
remorse and even those of despair ; and I doubt not that He 
did thus suffer. 
*John 19. 34. 



94 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

us ; just as the physical death of the first Adam, 
though long delayed, was the direct consequence of 
the more awful spiritual death which he suffered 
for His own transgression. 

It may be asked, ' If Jesus thus shed his own 
blood, or " laid down his own life," how can it be 
said that he was slain ? ' We have already seen 
that to be subject to temptation " like as we are," 
it was necessary that Jesus should come to earth 
and be " made in the likeness of men." He was 
thus able to partake of bodily and mental suffering 
such as human beings undergo. He was to view 
death from a human standpoint. He was to suffer 
as a criminal executed for transgression. His con- 
demnation proceeded from the highest human tri- 
bunal in existence. He was deserted by the best of 
earth — by God's chosen people — by the very disci- 
ples who had so recently been ready to crown Him 
as their king. The step was now an easy and nat- 
ural one, humanly speaking, to a sense of desertion 
by God the Father. It was the fitting moment for 
Satan's most cruel temptations. It was the fitting 
moment for the veiling of the Father's presence 
from the suffering Son. Outward cruelties were 
the occasion, not the cause, of that awful abandon- 
ment, the death which Jesus tasted for every man. 



THE PERFECT SOLUTION. 95 

To illustrate this point, suppose a person stand- 
ing upon the edge of a precipice, with a firm rock be- 
neath his feet. Someone, with murderous intent, 
suddenly loosens that rock from its place, and the 
man falls headlong and is dashed to pieces. Strictly 
speaking, the cause of his death is concussion, and 
the cause of the concussion is gravitation. The 
loosening of the rock was the occasion of his death, 
not the cause; but it was the occasion without which 
the cause would not have been operative in pro- 
ducing death. The malicious act which occasioned 
death, was murder in the intention. But it was 
more ; it was murder in the act. No one could doubt 
this, nor that the dead man was murdered or slain. 

So in the case before us. It seems from the 
sacred record that the immediate cause of the 
Savior's physical death was the bursting of the 
heart ; that the cause of this was the agony of soul 
death, or abandonment by the Father. The cause 
of this abandonment was the purpose of the Father 
and the Son, that the human race should be thus 
redeemed. But the occasion of this two-fold death 
was furnished by the malice of wicked, though 
highly professing men. This occasion was neces- 
sary to His death. " This which is written must 
yet be accomplished in me, And He was numbered 



96 THE IAMB OF GOD. 

with the transgressors.* Observe how often the 
w r ord must occurs in the New Testament references 
to Christ's cruel treatment, f 

The perfections of God necessitate the punish- 
ment of the sinner by separation from God — spirit- 
ual death. The perfections of God determine the 
primary means of rescue as redemption by substi- 
tution. The perfections of God and the lost state 
of man in the fall, necessitate the descent of the 
Son of God to earth, that He Himself may suffer 
the " chastisement of our peace." The lost, dark- 
ened state of the human race necessitates that the 
manifestation of the Divine perfections which Jesus 
gave in His teachings, His life and His sufferings, 
be made in the very presence of the utmost mani- 
festations of human and Satanic malignity. And 
the Divine perfections necessitate that very malig- 
nity, in utmost and awful manifestation^ the one 
essential occasion by which the Holy One and the 
Just, even under the assumed limitations of the in- 
carnation, could suffer for the unjust the penalty of 
spiritual death, the price of human redemption, 
and physical death as a consequence of the more 
awful suffering which chiefly constituted the atone- 
ment for sin. 
*L,u. 22. 37. t Mat - 26. 54; Mk. 8. 31; Lu. 19. 22; 17. 25; 24.7, etc. 



THE PERFECT SOLUTION. 97 

Peter therefore says correctly, " Him, being de- 
livered by the determinate counsel and foreknowl- 
edge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands 
have crucified and slain."* " Wicked hands." "It 
must needs be that offences come, but woe to that 
man by whom the offence cometh."f Divine love 
and human malignity each has its part in " the 
great transaction ;" but the one loses nothing of 
its ineffable purity, and the other nothing of its 
awful guilt, by the fact that " thus it must be." 

*Acts 2. 23. -f-Mat. 18. 7. 



98 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

CHAPTER XVI. 

THE OFFERING OF CHRIST SUFFICIENT. 

"It is finished." "Father, into thy hands I commend my 
spirit." — John 19. 30; Lu. 23. 46. 

IT is finished." A moment more and the lips 
of Jesus will be silent in death. But the brief 
interval between the extremity of suffering and the 
extinction of physical energy, is a moment of ex- 
ultant joy. The great agony is over. God has 
" loosed the pains of death, because it was not pos- 
sible that He should be holden of it."* This was first 
true in a spiritual, afterwards in a physical sense, 
the very order which prevails in the salvation of 
men. The atonement completed, the Savior is 
again in the bosom of the Father. There is no 
dread of the tomb. The great purpose of His descent 
to earth is accomplished, for even now He has 
tasted death for every man.f The inexorable yet 
reasonable demand of Divine justice is fully met, 
the price is paid, the human race redeemed. Some 
prophecies are yet to be fulfilled. That body, life- 

*Acts 2. 24. 

fin proof of this we have the positive statement of Peter, 
that " He bore our sins in His own body on the tree ;" not when 
His body was in the tomb, nor when in the garden, nor when 
the soul was separate from the body. 



\ 



THE OFFERING OF CHRIST SUFFICIENT. 99 

less ere long by the most positive evidence, must be 
laid in the tomb and be raised the third day. He 
must show " Himself alive after His passion by 
many infallible proofs,"* not merely to fulfill 
prophecy, but to assure His followers in all ages 
that " He ever liveth to make intercession for 
them,"t " that what he hath promised He is able 
also to perform ;" J that the offering of Himself will 
be efficient to every sinner who will accept it as his 
hope, unto the end of time. But the loud, trium- 
phant " It is finished," is His own eternal attesta- 
tion that the suffering He had just endured in His 
hour of darkness, is sufficient in the eyes of the 
Father. He could now say, with exultant joy, 
" Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." If 
His expression of agony stands for inconceivable 
depths of anguish, His final exclamation denotes 
unmingled bliss. Henceforth He is the Savior of 
men ! Henceforth he that believeth in Him shall 
not perish, but have everlasting life ! He has vin- 
dicated God's justice by suffering for us its full 
measure in His own innocent person ; henceforth 
His name is above every name. 

But how shall this offering be a propitiation for 
the whole world ? A simple mathematical illustra- 

*Acts 1. 2. |Heb. 7. 25. JRom. 4. 21. 



IOO THE LAMB OF GOD. 

tion has helped some, and may help others, as a 
stepping-stone to a higher, wider conception of the 
subject ; though doubtless every illustration must 
fall short of an adequate expression of the great 
reality. L,et us for a moment look at the question 
thus : Suppose a human being with an average 
capacity for joy or suffering, enduring for a single 
hour the Divinely appointed penalty for sin. Take 
that hour's suffering as the unit of a computation. 
Multiply this by the whole number of the human 
race, and the product is the sum of all penal suffer- 
ing possible to the race, provided such suffering 
were limited to an hour's duration. But make it 
eternal. You must now multiply the product 
before obtained by the number of hours in eternity. 
This last factor is infinite. The product, therefore, 
which would stand for the sum of all penal suffer- 
ing possible to the human family, is infinite. 

Now mark the comparison. Suppose the suf- 
fering of the Son of God, when His soul was made 
an offering for sin, to have been only that of a sin- 
ful man with an average capability of joy or suffer- 
ing, and suppose that suffering to have continued 
for an hour. It then corresponds exactly with the 
unit in our former computation, and falls infinitely 
short of meeting the demands of Divine justice. 



THE OFFERING OF CHRIST SUFFICIENT. IOI 

It must have continued eternally, to be the redemp- 
tion price of a single soul — the soul of Jesus must 
have been left in hell. But the expiatory suffering 
of Christ, was of short duration. Whence, then, its 
infinite value ? What factor in it can make it an 
equivalent for the endless suffering of a condemned 
race ? We find the answer in the natttre and char- 
acter of Him who suffered. Reflect a moment. The 
capability of joy from the Divine presence, or of 
suffering through separation from God, must be 
least in him who has least knowledge of God, least 
sense of His perfections and His love, and least in 
himself that corresponds with these. The posterity 
of Adam, apart from any Divine provision for their 
enlightenment, would therefore have had but a 
small capability of suffering, such as we are con- 
sidering. Hell, in the sense of " destruction from 
the presence of God and from the glory of His 
power," could not be a bed of roses, even to these. 
It would be a state of unbridled passion, of endless 
discord and dissension, of sad unrest, of "everlasting 
burnings." But how much greater must be the 
pain of such a state to the soul which had caught 
some glimpses of the love of God and the peace of 
heaven, some sweet Divine instruction and some 
hope. How much keener still must be the sorrows 



102 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

of abandonment in the sonl which had forsaken sin, 
answered love with love, and learned to delight in 
communion with the Holy One. When, therefore, 
the only-begotten Son of God forsakes the infinite 
delights of the Father's presence and favor, and 
descends, though sinless still, to the companionship 
of demons, forsaken by Him for whom He had 
never felt an emotion at variance with perfect love 
— consider His infinite knowledge and His infinite 
love, His infinite holiness, and His infinite repug- 
nance for sin — one does not hesitate to affirm that 
as the Savior's knowledge, love, holiness and dig- 
nity infinitely transcend those of the holiest man, 
so must the agony of His suffering have infinitely 
transcended that of which the best mere human 
being is capable. In estimating the value of His 
sufferings for us, we have, therefore, an infinite 
factor and an infinite product ; and as we seek to 
appropriate the wonderful benefits of the atonement, 
we exclaim with profoundest admiration and grati- 
tude, and with peculiar emphasis, " He is the pro- 
pitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also 
for the whole world."* 

To this idea of equivalence some have objected, 
chiefly on the ground that if Christ thus bore the 

*I. John 2. 2. 



THE OFFERING OF CHRIST SUFFICIENT. 103 

entire penalty for the sins of the race, Justice could 
not again inflict that penalty upon the race, nor 
upon any member of it, however sinful. Some 
have attempted to answer this objection by assum- 
ing that God the Father, in His foreknowledge of 
who would and who would not be saved, so limited 
the suffering of His Son as to make it an equivalent 
for the sins of those only who would accept salvation. 
Both the objection and the above answer seem 
plausible, but both are shortsighted and mistaken. 
The plentitude of Christ's suffering for our redemp- 
tion depends not upon its duration nor upon any 
other finite factor, but upon the one infinite factor — 
the excellence, dignity and capability of the Suf- 
ferer.* This same factor would have been present 
if He had suffered " the pains of hell " for but one 

*In further illustration of this truth, it is sometimes said 
that a physical injury inflicted upon a human being, produces 
incomparably greater suffering than a like injury inflicted upon 
a beast ; because in man the body is joined with a rational soul. 
This must certainly be true, if mental suffering be considered ; 
for the human being considers the motive of the infliction, and 
the consequences to all concerned. Still the suffering is finite 
in value, because its subject is finite. In Jesus' suffering, there 
was the pain of a sinless, and therefore exquisitely sensitive 
body; there was the intense sorrow of a sinless and incompara- 
bly intelligent, rational soul; and there was likewise the partic- 
ipation of Deity Himself in all this anguish. Hence an infinite 
value, certainly. 



104 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

individual, or suffered them but a moment. In 
other words, Christ, the Creator and Upholder of 
all things, could not have become an offering for 
sin at all, without His sacrifice being infinite and 
ample. To taste death was the least that could have 
sufficed oil His part for a single soul; it was all that 
was 7ieeded to make of Him a sufficient sacrifice for 
all. 

Whatever help we may have derived from the 
foregoing arithmetical comparison, are not our rev- 
erent hearts now prepared to leave this behind us ? 
and in the fullness of living faith, and the fervor of 
holy devotion, to affirm our confidence that the 
plentitude of redemption rests in the plentitude of 
Christ Himself, and in the sublime fact that " God 
so loved the world that He gave His only begotten 
Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not 
perish, but should have eternal life." All our just 
reasoning but brings us back to this simple truth, 
which in every age, to the learned and the un- 
learned, has been " the power of God unto salvation, 
through faith which is in Christ Jesus." How 
may our hearts rejoice, that long before our minds 
had clearly apprehended the wonderful nature of 
the Savior's work for us, we believed that Christ 
died for the ungodly ;" and a faith toward God 



THE OFFERING OF CHRIST SUFFICIENT. 105 

which we could not define nor explain, sprang up 
within us, and we were saved. 

Again we stand in wonder before the wisdom, 
love and power of God, as manifested in Christ 
Jesus our Atonement ; and before the infinite ten- 
derness which makes faith alone in that finished 
work the ground on which the repentant, seeking 
soul may find life, and peace, and assurance forever. 

To whom this plenteous provision shall be made 
efficient, and on what conditions, it is certainly the 
right of Him who has voluntarily prepared it, to 
determine. 



106 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

CHAPTER XVII. 

AN OPEN WAY. 

" In whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgive- 
ness of sins." — Eph. i. 17. 

HPHE great redemption is now an historic fact. 
* " Those things which God had shown by the 
mouth of all His prophets that Christ should suffer, 
He hath so fulfilled."* Son of man — for by that 
name, O Infinite Savior, thou art forever dis- 
tinguished in the counsels of Heaven from the 
Father and the Holy Ghost, from angels and arch- 
angels — before thou wast lifted up thou saidst, 
" This is your hour and the power of darkness." 
Yet was the hour of deepest darkness peculiarly 
thine own ; for it marked thee the Redeemer of 
men.f Thy humiliation was thy glory. Thence- 
forward do the saints on earth join with the prophets 
who were before them, in attributing their salvation 
to " the precious blood of Christ ;"J and the saints 
in heaven, as they stand in thy glorified presence, 
exclaim in humble, reverent, grateful joy, " Thou 
art worthy * * for thou wast slain, and hast 
redeemed us unto God by thy blood." § 

But why speak of salvation by the blood? 1 — 

*Acts 3. 18. fjohn 17. 1. JPet. 1. 18, 19. gRev. 5. 9. 



AN OPEN WAY. I07 

Because the shedding of Jesus' blood marks the 
completion of the agony which atoned for sin ; or 
in other words, marks the completion of the atone- 
ment, according to His own word. Not until this 
took place, or was taking place, did He cry, " It is 
finished." 2 — Since it marks the depths of the 
Savior's suffering, it also indicates forcibly the 
Divine abhorrence of sin,* and the depth of the 
Divine love for the sinner, f 3 — Because this word 
(blood), more perfectly than any other, associates 
the sacrificial death of Christ with those offerings 
which had been its significant type in every preced- 
ing age. 4 — It is, by common consent of Christians, 
the memorial word of the great transaction which 
is the hope of the world. 5 — It means, in short, 
His giving His life a ransom for us. 6 — For these 
reasons, this word, better than any other, expresses 
an intelligent faith in the fundamental and dis- 
tinguishing doctrine of the Christian Scriptures, 
salvation by redemption, redemption by substitution, 
and that the substitution of the Just for the unju,st y 
the Infinite for the finite. 

Those who through ignorance or false refine- 
ment shrink from the reverent use of this most ex- 
pressive term, should acquaint themselves with the 

*See Heb. 12. 4. tK- om - 8. 32, and Jno. 15. 13. 



108 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

way of salvation, and learn by blessed personal ex- 
perience to think and speak of " the precious blood 
of Christ " with the same reverent humility and 
grateful love as do "the just made perfect" in 
heaven.* 

The apostle having set forth his knowledge of 
and faith in the atonement, by saying, " We have 
redemption through His blood," then indicates a 
leading benefit of the atonement, " the forgiveness 
of sins." This does not mean, as some have vainly 
imagined, an unconditional and final forgiveness of 
the race, so that the death penalty for sin could not 
be inflicted upon the transgressor. As we have 
before seen, the offering was quite sufficient for 
this, if such an application of it had been consistent 
with its purpose, the salvation of men. But it must 
ever be borne in mind that the great offering was 
gratuitous, God having been under no obligation to 
provide it ; and that, therefore, He has an unques- 
tionable right to determine the manner in which, 
the extent to which, and the conditions upon which 
its benefits shall accrue to the race or to the indiv- 
ual. "Is it not lawful for me to do what I will 
with mine own?" What His will is upon this sub- 
ject, He has not left us to determine by our own 

*For some common errors on salvation by the blood of Christ, 
see App. K. 



AN OPEN WAY. IO9 

imperfect reasoning, but has very fully and clearly 
declared. We look, therefore, to His word to dis- 
cover what the benefits of redemption are, and what 
limitations infinite Wisdom and Justice and Iyove 
has placed upon their application. 

I. We thus learn that the first effect of the 
atonement is the removal of the legal barrier to sal- 
vation, making the offer of salvation possible to a 
justly condemned race* This is reconciliation in 
its judicial sense. It applies to every member of 
the human family, changing the relation of the 
entire race to the perfect law of God. Otherwise it 
could not be true in any sense that Jesus Christ " is 
the Savior of all men,"f or that whosoever will may 
take the water of life freely. J This reconciliation 
is unconditional, or without our co-operation ; for 
" when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God 
by the death of His Son."§ It extends to every 
infant. It extends also to those who, having come 
to the years of understanding, have fallen under 
condemnation for their own transgression, securing 
to these the offer of salvation until they are saved, 
or until they have shown that they will not be 
saved. 

This sublime effect of the atonement offering 

*Roni. 3. 25, 26. fl Tim. 4. 10. JRev. 22. 17. &Rom. 5. 10. 



IIO THE LAMB OF GOD. 

opens the way for all its other effects, and is a suf- 
ficient guaranty of all else that is needful on God's 
part for human salvation ;* yet it would prove un- 
availing if not followed by another beneficent pro- 
vision which must come from God only, and which 
nothing but the great atonement could procure. 

II. The removal of the judicial barrier made the 
offer of salvation possible, not the salvation itself. 
For the state in which, but for the atonement, all 
of Adam's posterity must have been, was a state of 
utter darkness. The offer of salvation to persons in 
such a state, would be wholly unintelligible. No 
idea is fully developed except in presence of its op- 
posite. The most vivid description of color or of 
the pleasures of sight, could impart no adequate 
idea of either to one who was blind from his birth. 
So the offer of light, life, peace, to those who were 
by natural law in a state of death, darkness and 
condemnation, must have been devoid of meaning. 
It could result in no adequate conception, desire or 
volition. A capacity for salvation must therefore 
be created. Our Savior meets this stubborn diffi- 
culty by actually lifting the race penalty in so far 
as to enable every child to receive and feel the 
direct influences of the Holy Spirit, to apprehend 

*Rom. 8. %2. 



AN OPEN WAY. Ill 

the ideas of sin and righteousness, peace and con- 
demnation. He confers, in short, a measure of 
spriitual life. " In Him was life, and the life was 
the light of men."* The measure of life so imparted 
is by Christ, and enables the soul to perceive or 
receive Christ. It will be forfeited by the child 
upon his first deliberate and willful transgression. 
Still it is life in such measure as to make salvation 
possible ; life to the extent which may be necessary 
to make each person accountable for his own con- 
duct and its results ; and to make death as truly a 
direct personal penalty in the case of every trans- 
gressor as it was in the case of Adam.f But it is 
all of life that God could confer without us, and 
give us any part in our own salvation. Though it 
will not be retained unconditionally, it is conferred 
unconditionally, as necessary to render the other 
benefits of the atonement effectual. It is conferred 
upon every child. Otherwise it could not be said 
that Christ " lighteth every man that cometh into 
the world. "J It is justification in so far as this 
could be conferred without the co-operation of our 

*John i. 4. As " the light of the body is the eye," so the im- 
parted life is the light of men. But as the eye cannot light 
the body unless it receives light from some luminous object, 
so the imparted life requires Divine illumination. See next 
paragraph. fFor Bible proofs on this subject see Chap. V. 
JJno. 1. 19. 



112 THK LAMB OF GOD. 

wills. It is reconciliation in a moral sense, as de- 
noting a definite though unconscious change in our 
moral relation to God, and in so far as such recon- 
ciliation can be effected without our co-operation. 
It is sometimes called passive justification. The 
conferring of life upon every child is, then, the sec- 
ond great result of our Savior's suffering for us. 

III. The third is the bestowal of Light in the 
sense of illumination ; for in this sense also is Christ 
the Light of the world. By Him the irresponsible 
are not only made receptive, but are actually illu- 
minated — " every man that cometh into the world. " 
They are blest with the comforting, inspiring influ- 
ence of the Holy Spirit, and with the ministrations 
of holy angels.* This important benefit of the 
atonement, and the one which immediately precedes 
it, the conferring of spiritual life, explain to us why 
childhood seems so beautiful, and why it merits 
our tenderest care.f They also explain why little 
children are so very susceptible to religious impres- 
sions, and so intelligent in religious matters upon 
so little instruction. And they explain why the 
child has those clear ideas of sin and righteous- 
ness which live so helpfully in the rational soul 
after the spiritual life has been lost by sin ; and 

*Mat. 18. 10. f See Appendix L, Christ and the Children. 



AN OPEN WAY. 113 

why outward nature so clearly speaks to every soul 
of God. And they explain as from God, that incli- 
nation to worship, which is commonly attributed to 
nature. 

We may here pause to consider the condition of 
those children who die in infancy, or before they 
become capable of clearly understanding Divine 
law. The Bible is of course not addressed to such, 
and it says little about them. Certain conclusions, 
however, evidently merit our confidence. 

1 — Since Christ is the propitiation for the 
world, infants, who are a part of " the world," share 
the first benefit of the atonement, the removal of 
the legal barrier to salvation. 

2 — Since Christ " lighteth every man that cometh 
into the world," infants, being included in this 
number, share the second and third benefits of the 
atonement; being made receptive by the imparta- 
tion of spiritual life, and being also illuminated by 
the inshining of Christ the Light. 

3 — These leading benefits, accruing as they do to 
every child, according to Scripture testimony, we 
may confidently claim the salvation of every child 
who dies innocent of conscious transgression, upon 
the warrantable assumption, applicable at every 
stage of the work of grace in a soul, that the effect- 



114 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

ual conferring of any of the several benefits of re- 
demption, is a guaranty of the conferring of all the 
rest if not resisted. 

4 — Jesus said of little children, " of such is the 
kindom of heaven." If "it is not the will of your 
Father, that one of these little ones should perish," 
(and this expression, though it includes all begin- 
ners in Christian experience, must from its connec- 
tion include little children,) certainly they cannot 
perish without resisting His will. If they die, 
therefore, before such resistance is possible, all that 
is needful for their complete sanctification and per- 
fection is fully assured to them by the will of the 
Father, and through the sacrificial death of Christ 
our Savior. 

Nor does this imply a sanctification after death ; 
for how clearly God may speak to the infant who 
is to be taken from earth, we know not ; nor do we 
know, in the case of sudden death, how rapidly 
conviction, instruction, faith and the response to 
faith, may transpire in a soul already prepared for 
the deeper work of grace, complete sanctification 
by the baptism with the Holy Ghost. 

We may also notice in this place the question 
which very naturally arises when considering how 
perfectly the atonement covers the needs of those 



AN OPEN WAY. II5 

who die in infancy: Whether children may not be 
so well instructed during infancy, and so perfectly 
respond to that instruction in uniform and unhesi- 
tating obedience as not to need the new birth, but 
only the baptism with the Holy Ghost, when they 
reach the age of accountability. Upon this question 
it would be both needless and irreverent to specu- 
late, since it is settled in the most positive manner 
as a question of fact, by Divine testimony. " There 
is not a just man upon the earth that doeth good 
and sinneth not.* "No man that sinneth not."f 
" If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, 
and His word is not in us. "J " Except a man be 
born again, he can not see the kingdom of God."§ 
We must remember, however, that these compre- 
hensive declarations do not include infants ; for it 
is clear that infants are not under the law, and 
"when there is no law, sin is not imputed." || How 
comforting is the knowledge that our Savior thus 
secures the salvation of so large a portion of the 
race. Whether it is His will that so many shall die 
in infancy, is a question to be settled by other con- 
siderations than those which claim our attention in 
this volume. 

*Eccl. 7. 20. fll. Ki. 8. 46. il. Jno. 1. 10. gjno. 3. 3. 
|| Rom. 5. 13. 



Il6 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

FORGIVENESS OF SINS. 

" In whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgive- 
ness of sins." — Eph. i. 7. 

WE have now to consider those who, having- 
reached a clear knowledge of some portion 
of the law of God, transgress that law, and so merit 
eternal death as did Adam. It is clear that the 
offer of salvation is possible to these, through the 
purchased " forbearance of God."* " I came," said 
Jesus, " not to call the righteous but sinners to re- 
pentance, "f This shows not only that the offer is 
possible, but that it is actually extended. The 
same is shown by all the numerous offers and in- 
vitations of the Gospel to the sinner. 

But the life once imparted, is gone. The word 
is fulfilled, " The soul that sinneth, it shall die." 
God's word now is, " Incline your ear and come 
unto me ; hear, and your soul shall live." Inno- 
cence has been exchanged for guilt, peace for con- 
demnation, light for darkness. The offer of pardon 
is not pardon. To transgressors Jesus says ( for to 
such, especially, is the Gospel sent), "Ye must be 
born again." § "Except ye be converted and be- 

*Rom. 3. 25. fMat. 9. 13. JIs. 55. 3- 2J°o- 3- 7- 



FORGIVENESS OF SINS. XX 7 

come as little children, ye shall not enter into the 
kingdom of heaven."* To such the disciples ex- 
claim, " As though God did beseech you by us, we 
pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to 
God."f " Repent and be converted, that your sins 
may be blotted out."t 

But if the life once imparted is gone, is not 

I the capacity for salvation also gone ? It is not. 

! For that life, so lost, has left a definite impress on 
the rational soul. There remain, as an indelible 
imprint, the ideas of accountability, of sin and 
righteousness, of peace and condemnation. " Those 
peaceful hours I once enjoyed, how sweet their 
memory still." This has been the sigh of many a 
soul for the restful innocence of childhood. The 
natural conscience has received enlightenment that 
will not pass away. The soul, now dead through 
trespasses, has intelligibly set before it " life and 
good, and death and evil." It has within it a 
rational and moral basis for those powerful ap- 
peals of the Holy Spirit which will now come only 
upon the plane of rational life, but will draw and 
impel the soul to seek spiritual life. 

In this way God has written His law in every 
heart. § Yet He cannot commune with the trans- 

*Mat. 18. 3. 1 1 Cor. 5. 20. JActs 3. 19. $Rom. 2. 15. 



Il8 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

gressor by the continuous influx of His own life 
and light and joy. " The natural man receiveth 
not the things of the Spirit of God."* He must 
be addressed through reason and conscience, and 
by means which reason and conscience may appre- 
hend. This brings us to the fourth great benefit 
of the Atonement. 

IV. The various means of rational instruction, 
and the work of the Holy Spirit in witnessing 
through these in the rational soul, i — The first of 
these means is an outward Divine revelation. This 
began in Adam, God Himself at first taking the 
place of an outward instructor, and speaking to 
Adam after the fall, probably, in an audible voice. 
The way of salvation thus made plain to our first 
parents, was doubtless accepted by them and 
handed down by them in their instructions to their 
posterity, f Later came prophecy, in which " holy 
men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy 
Ghost ;"J the law, which was received "by the dis- 
position of angels ;"§ the psalms which, in both 
symbol and prophecy, so clearly " spake beforehand 
of the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should 
follow ;"*f the apostolic record of His life, death 

*I Cor. 2. 14. fSee Appendix H, An Early Revelation. JII Pet. 
1. 21. §Acts 7. 43. *fl Pet. 1. 11. 



FORGIVENESS OF SINS. 119 

and resurrection ; the remaining books of the Bible 
— the selection and limitation of the contents of 
this wonderful volume being no less remarkable 
than its character. A large part of the Bible can- 
not be understood or appropriated by unaided 
human reason ; but much of it may be, and it is 
one of God's chief means of instruction to the sinner 
as well as to the saint. 

2 — The example and precept of those who have 
received salvation. Upon moral questions the ex- 
ample of many who have not received salvation, 
may be helpful ; for many of these have lofty ideas 
of personal integrity, and exemplify it in their as- 
sociations with others. They " show the work of 
the law written in their hearts.'' On this account, 
if there were not a regenerate person upon earth, 
mankind, in virtue of the work of Christ, before 
described, would not be without examples of be- 
nevolence, kindness, amiability, pity, honesty and 
many other virtues, including even a degree of 
reverence. These could by no means exist in that 
perfection which is rendered possible by repentance 
toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, but 
would be quite sufficient to give added distinct- 
ness to every man's ideas of sin and righteousness.* 
*Many persons conclude that, because unregenerate men have 



120 THE UMB OF GOD. 

3 — The circumstances of life, which we call its 
providences, are means of Divine warning or instruc- 
tion to us. Even while God " suffered all nations 
to walk in their own ways, He left not Himself 
without witness, in that He did good, and gave us 
rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our 
hearts with food and gladness."* Life's bounty and 
its privations, its successes and failures, its comforts 
and sufferings are often the means chosen by God 
to turn the hearts of the unregenerate to Him. 

4 — So is the order and harmony of nature, 
speaking everywhere of design, of providence, and 
goodness, and inviting us to consider our relation to 
the great and loving Sovereign of the universe. 

And so wisely does the Holy Spirit dispose and 
use all these means of enlightment and persuasion, 
that every soul is supplied with sufficient incentives 

good traits of character, there is in every man, apart from re- 
demption, a natural goodness, which only needs be fostered 
to secure salvation. This unscriptural and anti-Christian 
idea is a dangerous mistake, and often, no doubt, a fatal one. 
We can see by the above, what is the real source of all the 
apparent excellencies of unregenerate men. If they would 
follow all the light they have, as well as they follow part 
of it, they would come to Christ and be saved. They would 
then discover how very little of real goodness their former 
character had held, and that the possession of that goodness 
gave them no merit whatever before God. ' ' What hast thou 
that thou didst not receive ? ' ' 
*Acts 14. 16, 17. 



FORGIVENESS OF SINS. 121 

to solemn reflection and to earnest effort for salva- 
tion. When any of these means is allowed to 
awaken in us the consideration of our needs, our 
obligations, and the love of God for us, the result is 
conviction for sin, and a longing for pardon and 
acceptance from God. When this has resulted in 
a willingness and purpose to forsake all sin and 
walk in humble obedience, the penitent may ask 
and receive the fifth great benefit of the Atone- 
ment. 

V. " The forgiveness of sins." This, in its 
very nature, implies the restoration of the life for- 
feited by transgression (this is called regeneration), 
and the removal of all sinward tendency, in so 
far as this had resulted from our own transgres- 
sions. This is God's own work in the soul, in con- 
sideration of the work of Christ for us, and in re- 
sponse to genuine repentance, and faith in Christ 
as our propitiation. The sinner cannot grow into 
forgiveness, nor into life, nor into adoption. These 
must be Divinely bestowed. He cannot earn them 
by faithfulness of conduct. They are freely con- 
ferred by God, and upon His own terms. 

A clear proof of the supernatural element in 
conversion, is the exuberant joy that attends our 
pardon. It is something more than peace of con- 



122 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

science ; for it is not proportioned to the remorse 
which preceded it. It has not a merely rational 
basis, for it is not proportioned to the clearness of 
our religious conceptions. It rests in our newly 
created life, an impartation from God. It links us 
with the joys of heaven and the powers of the world 
to come. It brings us to the embrace of a Father, 
for we have received the adoption of sons ; and 
what child does not know that in the embrace of 
unselfish parental affection there is a deep, inspir- 
ing, transforming joy, beyond the power of lan- 
guage to express, or of reason to understand. 

Another proof is the sudden capacity for light. 
God's truth lay all around us, and some portions of 
it could be understood by our natural reason ; but 
much that we longed to know was veiled from us. 
Now, in a moment, we are changed, and needed 
truth is as clear to us as the faces of our friends. 

Another proof is our changed affections, a stand- 
ing mystery, but for God's own explanation. Why 
the hatred of once loved sins ? Why the love of 
God's worship, His people, His word? WTiy the 
peculiar delight in secret prayer, and in the victory 
over sin ? Why have some pleasures in a moment 
lost their hold upon us ; and why do we so easily 
resist temptations which once seemed irresistible. 



FORGIVENESS OF SINS. 1 23 

It is because we are " born from above." " A new 
heart will I give you, and a new spirit will I put 
within you."* Divine grace has linked us to Christ 
as our invincible Captain. HE giveth us the vic- 
tory, and " we know that we have passed fiom 
death unto life."f 

And to all this richness of experience Christ is 
the door, by the shedding of His own precious 
blood for us, "that whosoever believeth on Him 
should not perish, but should have eternal life. "J 
*Ez. 36. 26. fl Jno. 3. 14. JJno. 3. 16. 



124 TH 3 LAMB OF GOD. 

CHAPTER XIX. 

SANCTIFIED AND KEPT. 

f ' We are sanctified by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ, 
once for all." — Heb. 10. 10. 

VI. But blessed as are the joys of pardon and 
regeneration — fit theme for enduring praise — 
the work of redemption reaches far beyond this 
stage of experience. If this is glorious, there re- 
mains that which is far more glorious. Sooner or 
later the regenerate become aware that the new life 
given at conversion, is placed side by side with a 
" body of death;"* an impediment to growth and 
to service, a source of much evil suggestion and 
even of direct resistance to the will of God. This 
discovery is often surprising, and always painful. It 
should never be discouraging ; for it is God's way 
of revealing a great need, and his preparation for 
revealing the Redeemer in a more transcendent 
light to the soul. 

There are faults in our nature which are not 
consequences of our own transgression ; sinward 
tendencies which come to us by inheritance from a 
fallen ancestry. They are at variance with holiness, 

*Rom. 7. 24. 



SANCTIFIED AND KEPT. 1 25 

and must be wholly removed before we are made 
meet for the kingdom of God. " The old man " 
must be "put off,"* "the body of sin destroyed,"! 
" the flesh " " crucified.";]; As this body of sin was 
ours without our transgression, it is not removed 
by our pardon. Yet it must be removed ; for " with- 
out holiness, no man shall see the Lord." § Even the 
infant who dies must experience this change to pre- 
pare it for the unveiled presence of the Father. The 
provision for this work of cleansing by the baptism 
with the Holy Ghost, is the sixth great benefit of the 
atonement. For those who are enjoying the priceless 
blessings of forgiveness, the Savior prays, " Father, 
sanctify them through thy truth," thus denoting 
the means ; Paul speaks of being " sanctified by the 
Holy Ghost," denoting the agency ; and again, " we 
are sanctified by the offering of the body of Jesus 
Christ once for all," thus showing the atonement 
to be the great procuring cause. 

When the Christian has yielded himself " unto 
God as those that are alive from the dead ;" has 
presented his " body a living sacrifice ;"** has made 
an uttermost consecration of himself to God, that 
he might be filled with the Holy Ghost ; and has 

*Eph. 4. 22. fRom. 6. 6. JGal. 5. 24. gHeb. 12. 14. **Rom. 
12. 1. 



126 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

believed in the finished redemption as the purchase 
and guaranty of this wonderful gift of grace, he enters 
the Sabbath rest prepared for the people of God.* 
He receives in the gift of the Holy Spirit an earn- 
est of his incorruptible inheritance, f He is filled 
with the fulness of God. J There was at conversion 
a receiving of the Holy Ghost, there was His pres- 
ence as a guide, keeper, instructor, comforter ; but 
it is the baptism with the Holy Spirit, the being 
filled with Him, which the Bible calls the gift of 
the Holy Ghost. If the former experience (regen- 
eration) was life, this is life more abundant — the 
preparation of the soul for heaven, the preparation 
for the most effectual service on earth. 

As we behold this marvelous work of grace in 
ourselves and others, we again look back upon our 
suffering Christ, and exclaim with greater contri- 
tion, greater humility, greater self-abasedness than 
ever before, " Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, 
to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and 
strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing. "§ By 
example and precept He has taught us to resist sin, 
and how to resist it. But the power to follow that 
example and that precept, to overcome the world, 
to stand against the wiles of the devil, and to bring 

*Heb. 4. 9. tEph. 1. 14. JEph. 3. 19. gRev. 5. 12. 



SANCTIFIED AND KEPT. 1 27 

forth fruit unto God, comes through sanctification 
of the Spirit, as truly the purchase of the Savior's 
blood as is the pardon of our transgressions. 

In thus speaking and thinking of the work of 
sanctification, let it never be forgotten that the Holy 
Spirit is not a mere influence, but a Divine Person 
to whom belong the same attributes which charac- 
terize the Father and the Son. He it is who con- 
vinces the world of sin, of righteousness, and of 
judgment ; who, as the representative of the Father, 
draws all men toward Christ ; who works in the 
heart of the sinner godly sorrow and repentance, 
and who witness to our salvation, when we have 
repented and believed in Jesus ; who comforts, 
guides and keeps the trusting believer ; who reveals 
to him his carnality, and makes him long for holi- 
ness. Yet He is sent by the Father and the Son, a 
gift to the believer who prepares his heart for this 
holy, heavenly occupant by a perfect surrender, 
dedication and faith. He is, with the Father and 
the Son, a proper object of worship and prayer, and 
of the most loving and grateful devotion. 

VII. The happy relation into which the 
believer is brought by regeneration, is fraught with 
manifold other blessings. " If I would declare and 
speak of them, they are more than can be num- 



128 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

bered." Prominent among them, and worthy of 
especial mention, is the power to prevail with God 
in prayer, in the name of the Son. This blessing 
is most fnlly realized after the experience of com- 
plete sanctiflcation has been received, though 
enjoyed in large measure by many consecrated souls 
who have not received that experience. " If ye 
abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall 
ask what ye will and it shall be done unto you."* 
" And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that 
will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the 
Son. If ye ask anything in my name I will do 
it."t Blessed Christ, how can thy saints sufficiently 
adore thee ? Thou dost not only conform them to 
thine image, but dost lovingly unite them to thy- 
self. They may pillow their heads upon thy bosom. 
They may pour into thy loving heart their com- 
plaints as well as their praises. They may approach 
the infinite Father in thy sacred name, O infinite 
Son. And dost thou indeed hear the crying of the 
poor, and the sighing of the needy ?t Does the cry 
of the oppressed enter into thine ears ? When my 
father and my mother forsake me, will the Lord 
take me up?§ To them that mourn in Zion wilt 
thou give beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourn- 

*John 15. 17. tjno. 14. 13, 14. IPs. 12. 5. £Ps. 27. 10. 



SANCTIFIED AND KEPT. 120, 

ing, the garment of praise for the spirit of heavi j 
ness?* Wilt thou in temptations, trials, and 
dangers, keep them as the apple of thine eye?f 
Yes, dear Redeemer, thou hast said it. We could 
not believe it but for thy word, nor receive it but 
by thy blood ; and thou hast bowed thy heavens 
and come down, and hast given us both. In thee 
do we hope, our blessed Advocate and Intercessor, 
VIII. Our Advocate ! This word suggests an- 
other benefit of the atonement, so singular that we 
could not believe it but for the Divine word. 
Though the regenerate are less likely to commit sin 
than the unregenerate, and the wholly sanctified 
less likely than the merely regenerate, yet both 
classes of believers experience temptations and may 
yield to them. It is well known that many believ- 
ers backslide in conduct, and become very nearly 
assimilated to the sinful, unbelieving world. This 
indicates a previous unfaithfulness, a backsliding of 
heart. Even those whose hearts are, in the main, 
true as steel, who would not deliberately transgress 
the known will of God, may be suddenly impelled 
to actions, expressions or thoughts which are sin- 
ful, notwithstanding the possibility of being con_ 
tinuously preserved from this. Probably very few 

*Is. 61. 3. fDeut. 32. 10. 



130 THE UMB OF GOD. 

persons live any great length of time without some 
conscious transgression. 

What, now, is the relation of the Christian to 
the Divine law after transgression? Jesus says, 
"Whosoever committeth sin, is the servant of 
sin."* John says, " He that committeth sin is of 
the devil, "f From these and similar statements 
we might infer that the penalty of sin is at once 
visited upon every believer who sins, and that if 
such are restored, regeneration must be repeated. 
This, however, is not a necessary inference. Be- 
yond all contradiction, perfect justification or sanc- 
tification cannot be known, so long as even the 
slightest sin rests upon the soul. Nor can perfect 
communion be enjoyed, nor perfect service ren- 
dered. The saint who sins, even in thought, 
increases the existing sinward tendency of his own 
heart ; or if he were wholly sanctified, creates in his 
heart such a tendency, a body of sin. His soul is 
brought, in a measure, under bondage, and all the 
work of grace hitherto experienced is endangered. 
But as yet the death penalty is suspended. Oppor- 
tunity is still given to attest the purpose of the 
heart by repentance and faith, more humble and 
perfect than ever; and to make our very sin a 

*John 8. 34. fl Jo*"* 3- 8. 



SANCTIFIED AND KEPT. 131 

means of future grace to us in an increased sense of 
our insufficiency, an increased knowledge of the 
deceitfulness of sin, an increased watchfulness and 
consecration to Him who giveth us the victory, an 
increased power to encourage the fallen. 

In the matter of salvation, God so honors the 
work of His dear Son that when once we have 
turned with full purpose of heart to Him, and are 
overcome by some sudden or unknown temptation, 
His mercy waits, and His agencies conspire to 
bring us again not only into the former relation, 
but even into a more perfect enjoyment of that 
relation. We are, for Christ's sake, held in a state 
of reprieve until we thus return to God, or until we 
are hopelessly backslidden and will not be saved. 

John clearly indicates this in writing to believ- 
ers, " My little children, these things write I unto 
you, that ye sin not ; and if any man sin, we have 
an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the 
righteous."* The same thought is present in the 
numerous reproofs and warnings to the churches, t 
The teaching of John is clear and positive : "If 
any man see his brother sin a sin which is not 
unto death, he shall ask, and He shall give him 
life for them that sin not unto death. There is a 

*I John 2. 1. fl Cor. 3. 1-4 ; I Cor. 5. 6 ; Rev. 2. 3, etc. 



132 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

sin unto death ; I do not say that he shall pray for 
it. All unrighteousness is sin, and there is a sin 
not unto death."* From this it is clear that even 
u a brother" may sin a u sin unto death," but that 
death is not awarded him until he has thus sinned. 
This wonderful benefit of the atonement does not, 
however, give the Christian the smallest license to 
sin. He who would thus abuse it, thinking to be 
saved at last by Divine mercy, insults that mercy, 
tempts Omnipotence, and adds sin to sin. No 
Christian can sin in the least without danger. His 
only safety is in the obedience of faith. But delib- 
erate sin is especially dangerous. No one who sins 
knows the moment when his will may pass beyond 
the possibility of effectual repentance, and consign 
him to despair. " Watch and pray, that ye enter 
not into temptation. "f " I say unto all, Watch. "J 

*I John 5. 16, 17. tMat, 26, 41. JMark 13. 37. 



PERFECTED FOREVER. 1 33 



CHAPTER XX. 

PERFECTED FOREVER. 

"For by one offering He hath perfected forever, them that are 
sanctified." — Heb. 10. 14. 

IX. But the work of redemption is not complete 
at the baptism with the Holy Ghost, nor even 
at that establishment in grace from which we shall 
never fall. Conformed in heart to the image of the 
Son, having Christ within, the hope of glory, the 
ripest saint on earth yet waits for the redemption 
of his body.* His physical frame is not the perfect 
servant of the new, pure heart God has given him. 
His body is feeble. Its motions and features yet 
speak of sinful action and thought, now done away, 
it is true, but yet marking the body as having been 
the servant of sin. The body retains habetudes 
which, though no longer sinfully indulged, yet 
suggest sin. If no longer a source, they are at least 
a means of temptation. And so marked is the 
bodily nature in this way, that it is the channel 
through which even truly sanctified parents com- 
municate sinful tendencies to their offspring. 
Moreover, these bodies are perishable. 

"*Rom. 8. 23. 



134 THE UMB OF GOD. 

And has the Atonement provided something 
better? It has. "This corruptible must put on 
incorruption, and this mortal must put on immor- 
tality."* " We look for our Savior the Lord Jesus 
Christ, who shall change our vile body, that it may 
be fashioned like unto His glorious body."f " The 
last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." How 
wonderful is the Divine order in salvation, con- 
forming exactly to that of the fall. The steps in 
that melancholy event were unbelief, transgression, 
death, moral depravity, mental depravity, physical 
corruption and physical death. In the return the 
steps are faith, repentance, life, moral cleansing, 
mental cleansing, and resurrection. Every man 
suffers all that is contained in the first list. Every 
man may experience all that is contained in 
the second ; for the great salvation embraces all. 
" We know," says the apostle, " that if our earthly 
house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a 
building of God, a house not made with hands, 
eternal in the heavens. "§ The wicked also will 
have a resurrection, but it will be " to shame and 
everlasting contempt."* f Only they who are 
cleansed by the blood of Christ, shall rise in His 
image. " These are they which came out of great 

*ICor. 15. 53. fPhil. 3. 20, 21. JlCor. 15. 26. §11 Cor. 5. 1. 
*fDan. 12. 2. 



PERFECTED FOREVER. 1 35 

tribulation and have washed their robes and made 
them white in the blood of the Lamb. There- 
fore are they before the throne of God."* We 
record, then, as the ninth great benefit of the 
Atonement, the resurrection of the saints in the 
image of Christ. 

X. And then the coronation by Christ's own 
loving hand. " Henceforth there is laid up for me 
a crown of righteousness, which the Lord the 
righteous Judge shall give me at that day, and not 
to me only, but to all them also that love His ap- 
pearing, "f "If we suffer, we shall also reign with 
Him."t " Be thou faithful unto death, and I will 
give thee a crown of life."§ " To him that over- 
cometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, 
even as I also overcame and am set down with my 
Father in His throne. "*f " And they shall reign 
forever and ever."* J 

*Rev. 7. 14, 15. ifll Tim. 4. 8. JII Tim. 2. 12. gRev. 2. 10. 
*fRev. 3. 21. *JRev. 22. 5. 



136 THE LAMB OF GOD. 



CHAPTER XXL 

COMPLETE IN HIM. 

" For it became Him for whom are all things and by whom are 
all things, in bringing many sons nnto glory, to make the 
Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings." 

— Heb. 2. 10. 

XI. We have now seen Jesus as the necessary 
and the sufficient sacrifice for sin. We have 
seen why, through Him, the offer of salvation is 
possible to all, and why it is made to all. We have 
seen also why the irresponsible are saved, and why 
an infinitely holy and unchanging God can pardon 
the sinner who repents and believes in Jesus. We 
have also seen that, according to the Holy Scrip- 
tures, numerous other benefits follow pardon in the 
case of those who continue to walk with God, the 
last of these benefits being exaltation to a crown 
and kingship eternal with Christ. But why all 
these benefits result from the death of Christ, has 
not been clearly shown. If that death was truly 
an atonement for sin, then the removal of the penal 
and other consequences of sin from those who, by 
the Divine decree, are eligible to the benefits of the 
atonement, must follow as a necessary and logical 
consequence of the atonement itself. But how 



COMPLETE IN HIM. 1 37 

should it follow that innumerable incentives are 
freely given to an offending race to come and 
receive the great salvation ? How should it follow 
to the Christian that "ye shall ask what ye will 
and it shall be done unto you?"* Why should 
the Christian who sins be held in a state of reprieve 
and be able to seek pardon in the name of an 
Advocate ? Finally, why should sinners saved by 
grace be not only saved to the estate of Adam before 
he fell, but be actually glorified with Christ ? 

To these questions the true and sufficient an- 
swer is to be found in the peculiar relation in 
which our Redeemer, because of His atonement, and 
its recognition by the Father, stands to mankind, 
and especially to the believer. 

1 — Primarily He is our Redeemer. u Ye are 
not your own ; for ye are bought with a price, "f 
As His purchased possession we are objects of His 
special care, and subject — so far as we permit our- 
selves to be — to His ever loving will. 

2 — He is our High Priest. J It was in this 
capacity that He offered up Himself as a sacrifice, 
and that He entered into heaven itself, § by His own 
blood,** now to appear in the presence of God for 

*I John 15. 7. fl Cor. 6. 19, 20. JHeb. 4. 14. gHeb. 9. 24. 
**Heb. 9. 12. 



138 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

us. In this capacity also He instructs His people, 
gives power to every means of grace, and is the 
" one mediator between God and man.* 

3 — He is our Brother. " That He might be a 
merciful and faithful High Priest, it behoved Him 
to be made like unto His brethren, "f In that He 
Himself hath suffered, being tempted, he is able to 
succor them that are tempted. "J Hence we are 
objects of His everlasting compassion. Nothing is 
wanting which may be needful to secure our perfect 
restoration to the Father's favor. In this loving 
relation He becomes our tender Shepherd, entrusted 
with our feeding, our guidance and our protection. 
"The L,amb which is in the midst of the throne 
shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living 
fountains of waters. "§ 

4 — Jesus Christ is not only our Brother, but He 
is the First-born,** in the sense of having in all 
things the preeminence ; *f the one competent and 
perfect representative of the redeemed race before 
God, as He is also the perfect representative of God 
to man. The burden of His loving heart must ever 
be to win as many as possible to the Father's favor, 
and to present them faultless before His throne.* % 

5 — To His true followers He holds the relation 

*I Ti. 2. 5. fHeb. 2. 17. iHeb. 2. 18. $Rev. 7. 17. **Rom. 
8. 29. *tCol. 1. 18. *JRom. 14. 5 ; Jude 24. 



COMPLETE IN HIM. 1 39 

of the Head to the other members of the body.* To 
such it is said, " It is God which worketh in you, 
both to will and to do of His good pleasure, "f In 
virtue of this relation of Christ to the church, there 
is ever present with them a supernatural Divine 
power sufficient for every need. But there is also 
an unutterable sympathy and a jealous guardian- 
ship, so vividly represented in the expression, " He 
kept him as the apple of His eye. "J 

6 — Again, He is our Prince. § His saints are 
His subjects. Their perfection must enhance His 
glory and His joy. It must enhance the Father's 
glory, which is ever the Son's delight. 

7 — Finally, He is our Captain — a Prince in ac- 
tion, at the head of His forces, leading those who 
trust in Him, to certain victory. " He teacheth my 
hands to war, and my fingers to fight."** But this 
captaincy is not a mere official relation to the 
redeemed. It is infinitely more than this. The 
love which prompted Him to become " the author 
of eternal salvation to all them that obey Him,"*f 
prompted Him to assume to these the tender, yet 
potent relation of their federal Head. As Adam, 
" who is the figure of Him that was to come,"* J was 

*Eph. 4. 12-16. fPhil. 2. 13. JDeut. 32 10. $Acts 5. 31. 
**Ps. 144. 1. *fHeb. 5. 9. ^JRom. 5. 14. 



140 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

the head of the human family, representing it in 
his condemnation, and imparting to it the bent of 
his own fallen nature, so Christ Jesus becomes the 
head of his followers,* representing them in separa- 
tion, trial and victory, and imparting to them the 
same mind that was in Him. The Father views 
them in Him, accepts them in Him,f claims them 
and treats them as sons because of Him. J They 
also are to see themselves in Him, crucified with 
Him,§ dead to sin with Him,** alive in Him,*f 
victorious in Him,* J and the great concern of their 
life, for themselves, is to " be found in Hini."*% 

Rest, assurance faith, hope, love, patience, long- 
suffering, humility, self-denial, utter consecration, 
courage, strength, zeal in service, victory, and 
unspeakable consolation and joy flow from the 
believer's proper recognition of the headship of 
Christ. Christ's offering is his offering ; Christ's 
faith is his faith ; Christ's conquest, his conquest ; 
" And ye are complete in Him, who is the head of 
all principality and power ; in whom also ye are 
circumcised with the circumcision made without 
hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the 
flesh by the circumcision of Christ ; buried with 

*Eph. 1. 22. fEph. 1, 6. JGal. 4. 4-7. §Gal. 2. 20. **Rom. 
6. 10, 11. *|Rom. 6. io, 11. *JI Cor. 15. 57. *gPhil. 3. 8, 9. 



COMPLETE IN HIM. 141 

Him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with 
Him, through the faith of the operation of God, 
who hath raised Him from the dead. And you, 
being dead in your sins, and the uncircumcision of 
your flesh, hath He quickened together with Him, 
having forgiven you all trespasses, blotting out the 
handwriting of ordinances that was against us, 
which was contrary to us, and took it out of the 
way, nailing it to His cross."* " Our old man is 
crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be 
destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve 
sin."f "God forbid that I should glory, save in 
the cross of our L,ord Jesus Christ, by whom the 
world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world."! 
" We are more than conquerors, through Him that 
loved us."§ "In Him the dominion of sin is for- 
ever broken. The awakened sinner finds he cannot 
do the things that he would.** The believer 
finds " I can do all things through Christ which 
strengtheneth me."*f 

But it is the high privilege of the true believer 
not only to see himself thus in Christ, but also to 
see God in Christ,*! and thus the blessed union of 
himself with God. u As thou Father art in me, and 

*Col. 2. 10-14. tRom. & 6. {Gal. 6 t I4# gR m. 8. 37. **Gal. 
5. 17. *fPhil. 4. 13. *JII Cor. 5. 19. 



142 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

I in thee, that they also may be one in us."* 
Amazing grace ! Infinite tenderness ! Truly " help 
is laid on One that is mighty, "f 

It is because of this wonderful relationship of 
Jesus to His church, that the believer is able to ask 
the Father in Jesus' name. It is likewise because 
of this relationship that the truly converted are 
heirs of all things, having, by covenant, all that is 
necessary for their perfection, their service, their 
everlasting peace. To have all these by possession, 
they have only to abide in Him, and exercise appro, 
priating faith in the moment of need. Such faith 
is of course always conditioned on perfect self- 
surrender ; an ever new and complete abandonment 
to Him. 

And it is this headship of our risen Lord, which 
is the guaranty of the ultimate perfection of all 
true believers. When any of these are prevented, 
without their own fault, from fully knowing or 
following the will of God, or when any of them die 
in the early stages of Christian growth, their entire 
sanctification and perfection is fully assured by the 
headship of Christ. 

One cannot ponder intelligently the wonderful 
relations in which the Savior stands to those whom 

*Jno. 17. 21. fPs. 89. 19. 



COMPLETE IN HIM. 1 43 

the Father hath given Him, without discerning in 
these relations and in the oneness of the Savior 
with the Father, the sufficient reason why the 
saints are so perfectly supplied with every means of 
grace while here, and glorified with Christ in the 
world beyond ; and why such powerful incentives 
are offered to sinners to come unto Him. 

Yet these relations are inseparably connected 
with His vicarious death for us. As the Son of 
God, He was perfect before the world was made ; 
but as High Priest, Elder Brother, Shepherd, Head, 
Prince, Captain, He was made "perfect through 
sufferings ; "* becoming all of these in the truest, 
fullest sense through that suffering by which he 
became our Redeemer. Observe how forcibly this 
thought is expressed by the apostle to the Gen- 
tiles : " Who (Christ Jesus) being in the form of 
God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, 
but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon 
Him the form of a servant, and was made in the 
likeness of men ; and being found in fashion as a 
man, He humbled Himself and became obedient 
unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore 
God hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a 
name which is above every name ; that at the 

*Heb. 2. 10. 



144 TH E LAMB OF GOD. 

name of Jesus, every knee should bow, of things in 
heaven, and things on earth, and things under the 
earth ; and that every tongue should confess that 
Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the 
Father."* We may reckon, therefore, as another 
glorious benefit of Christ's death for sinners, His 
exaltation by God the Father to that intimate and 
varied relation to the redeemed, which makes their 
perfection and exaltation His care and His delight ; 
while at the same time all power is given unto 
Him in heaven and in earth ; so that none that 
trust in Him shall perish, nor shall any be able to 
pluck them out of His hand. 

Thus, logically and naturally, are assured to 
believers in Jesus those amazing benefits of the 
Atonement which are clearly asserted in the Scrip- 
tures, but which may not appear to follow as direct 
and necessary consequences of His vicarious suf- 
fering. 

*Phil. 2. 6-1 1. 



WHAT MANNER OF LOVE. 1 45 



CHAPTER XXII. 

WHAT MANNER OF LOVE. 
" For God so loved the world." — John 3. 16. 

XII. An inestimable benefit of the great Atone- 
ment is its constraining and restraining 
power upon the human mind, as a revelation of the 
love of God. It lays open to us the Father's heart, 
with its tenderness, and pity, and well-wishing, with 
its spirit of self-sacrifice for our salvation. In His 
unutterable suffering for us, the Lord Jesus exhibits 
to us the mind of the Father. There is nowhere 
the slightest compromise with sin, nor a question 
as to its just deserts, nor a disposition to save men in 
their transgressions. On the contrary, there is an 
unyielding repugnance to sin, a most reverent 
regard for the Divine law, a consummate vindica- 
tion of the judgment of God against all unrighteous- 
ness. But this testimony of Jesus involves the 
sacrifice of Himself. We have endeavored to look, 
by the help of the Sacred Record, upon that depth 
of anguish which evoked the cry, " My God, my 
God, why hast thou forsaken me ?" Certainly we 
cannot forget that the only conceivable motive in 
the mind of the Son or the Father was infinite, in- 



146 THE UMB OF GOD. 

comprehensible love. Nor can we cease to thank 
and praise Him for this incontestable /ra?/" of love. 
To the vilest sinner, the messenger of the gospel, 
fresh from the contemplation of Christ's sufferings, 
can say, " God loves you." Many a sin-burdened 
soul has been arrested by this strange, yet blessed 
announcement, and despair has given place to hope ; 
and then, as proof was furnished in the story of the 
cross, that weary soul has believed and been saved 
from sin. 

The memory of the cross as a proof of Divine 
love, is one of the mightiest preventives of back- 
sliding. If God considered thy salvation worth so 
much ; if He could give His only begotten Son ; if 
that Son, moved by the same impulse, could thus 
suffer and die for thee, how dreadful to sin against 
a love like that ! And how dreadful sin must be, 
to call forth such a manifestation of love ! Re- 
deemed soul, how canst thou, in sight of Calvary, 
consent to a moment's indulgence of the most prom- 
ising temptation ? How sadly must love be wronged, 
Infinite Love, which could forego years of heavenly 
pleasure and suffer exquisite pangs for thy sake, if 
thou canst not for His sake deny thyself the pleas- 
ures of sin forever ! 

But the love of God as manifested in Christ is 



WHAT MANNER OF LOVE. 1 47 

also a potent incentive to positive holiness. Love 
like that will not fail thee, Christian, in thine hour 
of trial, nor suffer thee to be put to confusion. It is a 
sufficient ground for thy faith and hope in every 
conflict. This is not all. The cross of Christ 
pleads with thee more eloquently than words could 
do, challenging thy love. More plainly than in words 
does it say, " My son, give me thy heart" It con- 
strains thee to abandon thyself to Him, to be His, 
and only His, forever. It constrains thee to follow 
where he leads, to be filled with His Spirit, to spend 
and be spent for the glory of God and the salvation of 
men. It enables thee to " count all things loss for 
the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus 
[thy] L,ord." It enables thee to endure hardness ; 
to encounter perils ; to labor obediently, devotedly, 
where there is no apparent fruit ; to love and labor 
where thou art not loved. It teaches thee, and it 
helps thee, to manifest thy own love in self-sacrifice ; 
to be willing to suffer shame, persecution, ostracism, 
the spoiling of thy goods, bodily pain, and even 
death for Him, that some might be saved. This is 
the true spirit of cross-bearing. How many, it may 
be asked, of those who profess salvation by the 
L,ord Jesus Christ, really know what it is to take up 
their cross daily and follow Him ? Yet without 



148 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

this they are not His disciples. Let them consider 
Him, who endured the cross, despising the shame, 
and their hearts must grow more humble, more 
penitent, more fervent, more rich in all the fruits 
of the Spirit. And let them not forget that He 
liveth, to make intercession for them ; to secure the 
fulfillment of His precious promises to them ; to 
baptize them with the Holy Ghost, " that Christ 
may dwell in [their] hearts by faith ; that [they] 
being rooted and grounded in ix>VE, may be able to 
comprehend, with all saints, what is the breadth, and 
length, and depth, and height ; and to know the 
love of God, which passeth knowledge, that [they] 
might be filled with all the fullness of God." 

To every human heart that is open to receive it, 
the suffering of our Lord as revealing the love of 
God toward us, is the most powerful influence for 
correction, for consolation, for assurance, for con- 
straint to holiness and to service. Love, Love, in- 
finite, self-sacrificing Love ! Sinner, couldst thou 
contemplate it for a moment, methinks thy heart 
must cry out, " Draw me, I will run after thee ;" 
and then thou wouldst become aware of the great 
burden upon thy back, the guilt of committed sin, 
the certainty of its awful deserts ; and thou wouldst 
be enabled to see thy loving Lord bearing these 



WHAT MANNER OF 1,0 VE. 1 49 

deserts for thee that thou through repentance and 
faith mightest be saved. And then, as thy heart 
confided in Him as thy Savior and Redeemer, seek- 
ing pardon and a new heart through Him only, 
thou wouldst find thy burden gone ; thy heart trans- 
formed, reconciled ; thy soul sustained and filled 
with heavenly love ; and thy tongue could say, in 
rapture, " / know that my Redeemer liveth." 



Thus the great Atonement stands before us, a 
transaction simple in its nature yet manifold in its 
relations and results, revealing in one view the 
corruption and malignity of the human heart, and 
the holiness and love of God ; the just and awful 
penalty of sin, and the unspeakable joys of salva- 
tion ; the helplessness of man without Christ, and 
his sublime possibilities in Christ. 

In the light which Holy Scripture throws upon 
this great transaction, one intelligent look at the 
Crucified One has in it more illuminating, trans- 
forming power than a life-time study of human 
philosophies ; one moment of child-like faith in the 
suffering, dying, risen Savior, than a lifetime of 
the severest morality. For that look and this faith 
are the open door through which Divine power 



150 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

feet the astounding miracle of a new creation in the 
image of God.* "What the law could not do, in 
that it was weak though the flesh, God, sending His 
own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, 
condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness 
of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not 
after the flesh but after the Spirit."t " Thanks be 
unto God who giveth us the victory, through our 
Lord, Jesus Christ I" 



Let us now recount the several most striking 
benefits of the Savior's death, fully assured to all 
who receive Him, by His present, eternal life. 

I. The removal of the legal barrier to salvation, 
so that God might be unchangeably just, and yet 
justify the sinner who believes in Jesus. 

II. The creation of a capacity for salvation, by 
the impartation of life to every child ; this life 
being the light of men, as the eye is the light of the 
body. 

III. The illumination of every man that com- 
eth into the world. 

IV. The various means of rational instruction 
through which the Holy Spirit speaks, even to those 
who have become dead through trespasses. 

*Col. 3. 10. t Rom - 8 - 3. 4- 



WHAT MANNER OF LOVE. 151 

V. Pardon for the sinner who repents and 
believes in the I^ord Jesus Christ as his Savior. 

VI. The complete sanctification of the believer 
by the baptism with the Holy Ghost. 

VII. The power to prevail in prayer in Jesus' 
name. 

VIII. Reprieve or suspension of penalty to the 
Christian who sins " a sin not unto death." 

IX. Resurrection in the image of Christ 

X. A throne with Him in His kingdom. 

XI. The exaltation of Jesus Christ to that 
supreme relation to the redeemed, which is a perfect 
guaranty to every irresponsible person and to every 
true believer, of all the above-named benefits of the 
atonement. 

XII. And finally, that incomparable revelation 
of Divine love to men, which appeals irresistibly to 
every true heart as an incentive to forsake all and 
follow Him. 

Blessed Redeemer, do all these wonderful pro- 
visions for salvation belong to the riches of thy 
grace ? Are they the purchase of thy blood ? They 
are. Not one of them could ever accrue to us with- 
out thy death. By that death they are all made 
ours if we but will. I thank thee that thou hast 
died for me. I admire the inspiring example of 



152 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

thy spotless, holy life ; I dwell in mute wonder 
upon thy inimitable precepts ; I delight to contem- 
plate thy marvelous humiliation and thy ascended 
glory. Each of these has its inestimable part in 
thy work for my salvation. But not all of these, 
my risen L,ord, so kindle my heart with the fervor 
of holy devotion as does the memory of thy suffer- 
ing. Thou art indeed my Counsellor and my 
Exemplar, my High Priest, my Elder Brother, my 
Prince, my Captain ; but thou art also, and first, 
my Sacrifice. 

"Nothing in my hand I bring ; 
Simply to thy cross I cling ;" 

for thou hast borne for me my griefs and carried 
for me my sorrows. Infinite is thy love. Thou art 
God over all, blessed forever; yet art thou also 
" the L,amb of God, which taketh away the sin of 
the world." Through all the years of my account- 
ability, thy blood has pleaded for me before the 
mercy seat. In my infancy it covered me. In my 
manhood it cleansed me, Oh, how wondrously ! 
Through thy blood accepted as my plea, thou hast 
become my Leader, Comforter, Defender, my all in 
all. Through this do I humbly cry, "Abba, 
Father." Through this do I receive the sanctify- 
ing fulness of the Holy Ghost. And if at thy coming 



WHAT MANNER OF IX>VE. 1 53 

I shall be worthy to stand in thy unveiled presence 
and behold thy glory, and shall be by thee pre- 
sented faultless before the Father, it will be because 

THOU ART WORTHY, AND WAST SLAIN, AND HAST 
REDEEMED ME UNTO God BY THY BLOOD. 
Amen. 



APPENDICES. 



APPENDIX A. 

THE DOCTRINE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 

WHETHER hell is and what it is, are not 

T T questions of speculation, but of fact. There 
are just two ways of directly determining such 
questions. One is by experience, the other by 
testimony. In the case before us, experience fails. 
None of us can, while living upon this earth, be in 
precisely the state of the finally impenitent after 
final judgment. For even the worst sinner upon 
earth derives some encouragement from false hopes, 
and some comfort from diversions, and from the 
Divine influences which prevail in the world about 
him. Our knowledge of the state of lost souls 
must therefore rest upon testimony. But, for the 
reasons already given, it cannot rest upon human 
testimony. Have we any other ? Most certainly, 
the word of our Savior. In Him " are hid all the 
treasures of wisdom and knowledge."* "And we 
know that His testimony is true."t His word 
upon any point is therefore final. He knows and 
He is true. 

*Col. 2. 3. tjohn 21. 24. 



158 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

What, then f has this witness said upon the 
state of the finally impenitent ? 

1 — He calls it hell. Mat. 5. 22, 29 ; 10. 28 ; 

l8 - 9 ; 23. 33i e tc 

2 — He describes it as a state of torment. Mat. 
8. 42; 25. 41, 46; Mk. 9. 43, 44; Lu. 13. 28; 16. 24, 28. 

3 — He represents the state as endless. Mat. 25. 
41, 46; Mark 3. 29; Lu. 16. 26; Mat. 12. 32; 
Mark 9. 43-48. 

4 — His testimony leaves no doubt at all that 
some will receive this punishment. This is suffici- 
ently shown by the above references. 

It may be asked, Did not Jesus, when speaking 
of this subject, use metaphoric language? At 
times He may have done so, but not more than 
when speaking of heaven. If the description fa^ls 
in one case because figurative language is employed, 
would it not fail in the other case for the same 
reason ? If hell is not to be dreaded and shunned 
as a reality, is heaven to be hoped for and sought 
as a reality? Certainly no reasonable person 
can doubt that the language of Christ respect- 
ing heaven and hell, denotes important and widely 
contrasted realities. And when He speaks of each 
as "eternal" it seems difficult not to understand 
that both are enduring realities. 



THE DOCTRINE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 1 59 

Those who disbelieve the doctrine of future 
punishment, or of eternal punishment, affirm that 
the Old Testament word Sheol and the New Test- 
ament word Hades, the former of which, in the 
Authorized Version is sometimes translated " hell," 
and as often " the grave ;" and the latter of which 
is, except in one instance, always translated" hell," 
really meant only the grave, or at most the unseen 
world. To my own mind this affirmation is with- 
out proof. One can hardly examine the passages 
in which these words occur, and compare them 
with other Scripture bearing upon the subject, 
without concluding that " Hades " always, and 
" Sheol " generally, meant something more than 
the grave. In thirty-one places " Sheol " is trans- 
lated the grave ; but in only a few, if any, of those 
places is it clear that a mere burial place is intended. 
In thirty-one places the same word is translated 
hell ; in most of these places it is clear that some- 
thing more than a burial-place is meant. It is a 
remarkable fact that where the gave is mentioned 
in our Authorized Version in connection with a 
possessive, as, " Rachel's grave," " Abner's grave," 
(l his grave," " my grave," "your graves," and 
when the thought is pleasant, peaceful, respectful, 
or tender, the word used is never " Sheol." On the 



l6o THE LAMB OF GOD. 

contrary, where sorrow, shame and punisment 
are connected with it, the word is always 
" Sheol." It is also true that where the translators 
have rendered " Sheol " as hell, the term is associ- 
ated with sorrow, pain, sin, condemnation, and 
personal suffering. So that the word in these 
places clearly denotes, not the burial place of 
the dead, but the state of the dead, and particu- 
larly of the wicked dead. It is difficult to see how 
any candid investigator of the Old Testament could 
doubt for a moment that the punishment of the 
wicked by conscious suffering after death is cer- 
tainly and repeatedly taught in that great reposi- 
tory of truth. 

But as many another doctrine of the Old Testa- 
ment is rendered more vivid and tangible by the 
teachings of our blessed Savior, so the doctrine of 
future punishment. The word employed by Him, 
or rather the word used by the writers of the gos- 
pels in recording in Greek His discourses, is 
"Hades," invariably translated "hell" in the A. 
V., and left untranslated in the R. V.; or the word 
" Gehenna," which is translated " hell " in both 
versions. 

The former word Jesus used in His dreadful 
denunciation of Capernaum : " And thou, Caper- 



THE DOCTRINE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT l6l 

naum, which art exalted to heaven, shalt be thrust- 
do wn to Hades ;"* and again in the parable of the 
rich man and Lazarus : " And in Hades he lifted 
up his eyes, being intorment."t If then, "Hades" 
is the equivalent of the " Sheol " of the Old Testa- 
ment, the teachings of our Savior fix the meaning 
of both as the state of the guilty and condemned 
after death, and define it as a state of suffering. " I 
am tormented in this flame." Here occurs an 
allusion to fire in this same Hades, quite in har- 
mony with the like allusions in the Old Testa- 
ment^ and with the numerous statements of Jesus 
respecting future punishment. Six times, at least, 
does the L,ord use the burning pit Gehenna to rep- 
resent the penal suffering of those who die in their 
sins.*t Elsewhere He speaks of it as "everlasting 
fire,"*t " unquenchable fire,"*§ a "furnace of 
fire,"** "everlasting punishment. "tt 

It is thought by some that Gehenna and the 
other terms just quoted refer more particularly to 
the state or the punishment of the wicked after the 
final judgment — " the second death," as it is termed 
in Rev. xx — but it is noticeable that the same ele- 

*Lu. 10. 15. -f-lvu. 16. 23. JLu. 16. 24. gSee Is. 33. 34; 66. 24; 
Deut. 32. 22. *fMat. 5. 22, 29. 30; 10. 28 ; 18. 9 ; 23. 15; 
23. 33. *JMat.i8. 8, 25, 41. *$Mat. 3. 12; Luke. 17. 3; 
**Mat. 13. 42, 50. ffMat. 25. 46. 



1 62 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

ment, fire, is mentioned by Jesus in connection with 
Hades. If Hades, then, is to be limited in mean- 
ing to the state of the wicked between death and 
the final resurrection and judgment, we may clearly 
infer their state to be essentially the same, or sim- 
ilar, before and after that great day. Perhaps even 
the false hopes of the intermediate state (L,u. 16. 
24, 27), will then depart forever. Except in this 
respect, I find no clearly marked difference denoted 
in Scripture. 

The solicitude and suffering of Christ for the 
salvation of men, and the untiring zeal of the 
apostles for the same end after they were filled 
with the Spirit, can only be accounted for on the 
ground that hell is an awful reality, and that when 
once it has become the award of the wicked it is 
without hope. I fail to find any ground for the 
doctrines of Restorationism and Annihilationism. 
These doctrines have again and again been set 
aside by the church, and I do not doubt that they 
ever will be. Still they come up to beguile un- 
stable souls and to try the faith of the church. 

Christ on the cross, in the agony of separation 
from the conscious presence of the Father, has 
given to those who will observe and understand, 
the final, incontrovertible evidence of the nature of 



PERSONALITY AND CHARACTER OF SATAN. 1 63 

future punishment. One of the ways in which He 
" brought life and immortality to light," was by 
presenting so vividly and clearly the alternative. 
Can the Christian teacher do better than to accept 
in faith these teachings as he does the other words 
of his Master, and proclaim them with the same 
calm confidence? Is the disciple above his 
Master or the servant above his Lord ? He may 
thus incur the displeasure of the world, both in the 
church and out of it ; but in what other way can 
he be " clear of the blood of all men?" 



APPENDIX B. 

PERSONALITY AND CHARACTER OF SATAN. 

T S Satan a living, intelligent, malicious person, or 
1 only an evil principle or evil disposition ? 

This, also, is a question of fact, and one which 
can only be conclusively settled by testimony. The 
reliable witness is the word of God. Many persons 
entertain speculative notions upon the subject, and 
hold those notions as tenaciously as if they had a 
right to them ; while the Bible, which answers the 
question clearly and with authority, is not allowed 
a hearing at all. Some of these mistaken persons 
profess Christianity and a belief in the Bible; yet 
rest in an erroneous opinion rather than " search 



1 64 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

the Scriptures diligently to see whether these 
things are so." The better to enforce the testi- 
mony of our unimpeachable witness, we will pre- 
face it by a simple illustration : 

Suppose that in rambling through the woods 
you should approach what seemed to you a large 
stone, and that as you draw near it should speak to 
you. You would be startled, of course, and would 
look about to find the persojt who had uttered in- 
telligible words. You pass quite round the stone 
and satisfy yourself that the voice is from the stone 
itself, and is not an echo. It is not the voice of a 
bird, for it reasons with you, answers your ques- 
tions, and displays original cunning. You go on 
your way, and presently the rough stone is in your 
path again. You question why it is there, 
and it returns an intelligent answer. You find 
that it has the power of voluntary motion, and 
that it comes there because it pleased. You are 
now ready to say, That which conversed with me, 
sometimes persuasively, sometimes angrily, but 
always intelligently, and which persisted in getting 
in my way as I walked, was not a stone, but a per- 
son. And if you knew that you were awake and 
possessed of all your faculties, the whole world 
could not drive you from your conclusion. 



PERSONALITY AND CHARACTER OE SATAN. 1 65 

L,et us see now what the Bible teaches us about 
Satan. First — In speaking of him, it invariably 
uses the masculine pronoun he, which, of course, 
implies personality, except when used figuratively. 
Secondly — The Bible attributes to Satan and his 
angels every essential attribute of a free, created 
personality similar to men and to other intelligent 
beings. Observe what these attributes are : 

1 — Intellect. Jesus " suffered not the devils 
to speak, because they knew Him. (Mark 1. 34). 
Here the powers of preception and comparison are 
unmistakably indicated. " The wiles of the devil," 
(Eph. 6. n), represents him as having constructive 
imagination. James's assertion that "the devils 
believe " (Jas. 2. 19), attributes to them the power 
of reasoning \ and so does Paul's expression, "doc- 
trines of devils." (I. Ti. 4. 1). The three chief 
forms of intellectual activity are therefore present 
in demons, according to Scripture testimony. 
They are all very clearly portrayed in the account 
of Job and that of Christ. 

2 — Sensibility. To Satan and other devils be- 
longs also an emotional nature. " Art thou come 
to torment us?" (Mat. 8. 29), shows them capable 
of pain. " Devils tremble " (Jas. 2. 19), shows 
them capable of fear. " Ye are of your father the 



l66 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do" 
(John 8. 44), shows them to have desires. The 
same is shown in Mat. 8. 31 : " And the devils be- 
sought Him, saying, If thou cast us out, send us 
away into the herd of swine." 

3 — Wilx (Choice and Volition). Choice is 
clearly shown in the last preceding quotation ; also 
in I. Pet. 5. 8 : " Seeking whom he may devour." 
Volition is shown in the expressions, " When the 
the devil had thrown him in the midst." (L,u. 4. 
35). "The devil threw him down and tore him" 
(Lu. 9. 42) ; and Paul's statement that some are 
taken captive by the devil "at his will" (II. 
Tim. 2. 26). 

4 — Moral Accountability. " The devil sin- 
neth from the beginning." (I. John 3. 8). It 
would be impossible for the devil to siu, unless he 
had a knowledge of right and wrong, and power to 
choose between them. " The devil that deceived 
them was cast into the lake of fire." (Rev. 20. 10). 
Here is punishment. Punishment implies guilt, 
and guilt the ability to have done otherwise. Devils 
are therefore accountable beings. If the possession 
of Intellect, Sensibility and Will, the essential fac- 
ulties of mind, did not prove the personality of 



PERSONALITY AND CHARACTER OF SATAN 1 67 

demons, their accountability for their conduct does 
prove it beyond all question. 

5 — Speech. " The devils besought." (Xu. 4. 
3, 6). Satan answered the L,ord and said." (Job 

i- 7, 9)- 

6 — Hearing and Understanding. "Get 

thee hence for it is written." (Mat. 4. 10). See 

also Job 1. 6, to 2. 7. 

These plain evidences show Satan, the devil, 
and indeed all devils to be created beings ; for the 
Uncreated is not accountable : to be free, because 
they have sinned : and to be personalities essen- 
tially similar to men and other intelligences. 

Now note some things which the Bible does not 
teach : 

1 — It does not teach, anywhere, that Satan is a 
mere " principle of evil." If it did, it must contra- 
dict itself. A principle has none of the six per- 
sonal attributes above given. L,east of all, could it be 
accountable. To assert, therefore, that Satan is a 
" principle of evil," is to make God the author of 
sin. 

2 — The Bible does not teach that the devil is a 
human " disposition " or " tendency." A man 
thinks, but his disposition does not think. A man 
feels, but his disposition does not feel. A man wills, 



l68 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

and may have a willful disposition, but his dispo- 
sition does not will. He speaks, hears and under- 
stands ; but his disposition does none of these things. 
He may be more or less accountable for his dispo- 
sition, but his dispooition is not accountable. 

3 — For like reasons, it is clear that the Bible 
does not teach that the devil is a disease or infirm- 
ity, or that diseases and infirmities are devils. 

4 — The Bible does not teach that " every man 
is his own devil.' ' How absurd is such a thought 
in the light of Scripture statement. " I beheld 
Satan as lightning fall from heaven." (L,u. 22. 
1 8). " Satan hath desired to have you." (L,u. 22. 
31). " Out of whom He had cast seven devils." 
(Mk. 16. 9). " When the unclean spirit is gone out 
of a man, etc." (Mat. 12. ^^). "Then went the 
devils out of the man." (L,u. 8. 33). " The devil 
leaveth him." (Mat. 4. n). 

When Christ said to Peter, " Get thee behind 
me Satan," He evidently rebuked Peter as the tem- 
porary though unconscious representative of Satan 
in the statement he had just made ; or perhaps the 
word Satan was used in its ordinary signification of 
adversary. When He said to the disciples, " One 
of you is a devil," He merely announced before- 
hand the completeness of Judas' apostasy, and his 



PERSONALITY AND CHARACTER OF SATAN. 1 69 

becoming one in purpose, character and doom with 
the kingdom of Satan. 

While Satan is, in power and in cunning, super- 
human, as we are bound to infer from the Scripture 
testimony, he is not omnipresent. He is not in 
heaven and never will be. (Rev. 21. 27; 20. 10). 
His apparent ubiquity is due to the fact that he 
has numerous messengers who are one in nature, 
character and purpose with himself, and thus every 
man is tempted by him through these messengers. 
He is not omniscient, nor omnipotent. Though he 
is a malignant personal enemy of God and of our 
souls, the soul that is cleansed by the precious 
blood of Christ and remains fully committed to 
Him, has nothing to fear from this fallen angel. 
On the contrary, Satan's snares and wiles, discovered 
and resisted in the power of the Holy Spirit, who 
is always present with the trusting and obedient 
believer, become a means of added knowledge, 
strength and faith ; and so are among the " all 
things " that " work together for good to them that 
love God, to them that are the called according to 
His purpose." Such have always had the victory 
through Him that loved us and gave Himself for 
us. " They overcame him by the blood of the 
Lamb and by th£ word of their testimony." 



IJO THE LAMB OF GOD. 

APPENDIX C. 

DIVINE WRATH. 

THE thought that anger, indignation or wrath 
exists in the mind of God, is extremely dis- 
tasteful to some, who deem it incompatible with 
other attributes ascribed to Him in the Scriptures, 
and even with His own demands upon men. It is 
indeed remarkable that the frequent use, in Scrip- 
ture, of those expressions which attribute such 
emotions to Deity, has been repeatedly urged as an 
argument against the inspiration of the Bible, by 
those whose contrary notion of Divine purity, holi- 
ness and love has been received, either directly or 
indirectly, from the Bible alone. 

Christians have often been puzzled to explain 
these expressions, and some religious teachers have 
offered explanations little calculated to promote 
confidence in the Book. One writer boldly asserts 
" God never was angry ;" thus opposing his own 
opinion to much positive Scripture statement. 

The difficulty with such persons is this : They 
conceive of anger only as it is exhibited by depraved 
humanity ; and as thus exhibited they deem it essen- 
tially and utterly contrary to virtue and love. The 
opinion thus formed is held as sacred truth, and 
even the word of God is judged by it. The error of 



DIVINE WRATH. 171 

such persons would be quickly dispelled by looking 
beneath the surface of things, and discovering the 
true nature of that which they so hastily condemn. 

Whether in its milder form, to which we give 
the name of indignation, or in its more destructive 
form, in which we speak of it as wrath, anger is, in 
its true nature, as pure and innocent as any other 
emotion. As it is impossible to form any true con- 
ception of a rational, moral being, even of God 
Himself, which does not embrace an emotional 
nature, so it is impossible to conceive of any just 
administration of government among free moral and 
sinful beings, in which this particular emotion is 
not exercised. 

A moral government in which guilt is not fol- 
lowed by condemnation and penalty, is a myth or 
a mockery. In all pure minds the perception of 
injustice is followed by a sense (an emotion) of 
repugnance, the expression of which, through the 
moral judgment, is condemnation. But in such 
minds there arises also another emotion, the expres- 
sion of which, through the will, is punishment. 
That emotion is called anger, indignation, or wrath, 
according to its real or supposed intensity ; though 
these terms are often used indiscriminately, or with- 
out reference to degrees of intensity. Probably all 



172 THE UMB OF GOD. 

persons who have seriously thought upon the subject, 
believe in such a thing as just indignation. Who 
would wish to be the parent of a boy who could 
listen to a story of cruelty and outrage, and not 
have his eye glisten and his face burn with an im- 
pulse to right the wrong and bring the offender to 
justice ? Or what son would delight to own a parent 
who was incapable of such emotion, or who failed 
judiciously to manifest it? 

But lest these remarks should seem to excuse 
the irritability and the tempestuous passion which, 
instead of promoting, go so far to disturb the peace 
of the home and of society, it is necessary to dis- 
tinguish between the nature of an emotion and its 
exercise, and between its moral and its sinful exer- 
cise — its use and its abuse. No impurity can be 
charged against any of the natural appetites, as to 
its nature ; nor does guilt attach to its proper use ; 
but any of these, when exercised beyond the limits 
of its true purpose, or upon improper objects, or 
contrary to the will of God, becomes sinful. The 
same is true of the desires and affections. 

The true purpose ot anger (using this term in 
its generic sense) is the defense of right against 
wrong by the punishment of sin. But just as the 
innocent appetite of hunger, in a depraved being 



DIVINE WRATH. 173 

and under temptation, leads to gluttony, or the ap- 
petite of thirst to drunkenness ; as the desire of 
esteem leads to ambition, and the desire of posses- 
sion to covetousness ; so the emotion of anger, in 
its appointed sphere one of the marks of noble 
mind, becomes in fallen man a source of untold 
wrong and suffering. It rises and finds expression 
in words, looks and actions before the mind has 
received any proper evidence of injustice ; it is 
called forth by mere suspicion ; it is excessive in 
its awards ; it rises to passion and for the time 
dethrones reason ; it deranges the functions of mind 
and body ; it even usurps the Divine authority, in- 
flicting punishments which none but God has the 
right to inflict. 

It is in such unholy and debasing exercise of it, 
that human anger is so strongly condemned in the 
Bible. And it is this view of it which has caused 
some to deny its existence in the Divine mind. 
Anger is, however, in its nature, a moral emotion, 
and in an omniscient and holy being is never exer- 
cised against the innocent, nor beyond the limit of 
perfect justice. It does not antagonize nor obscure 
any other attribute of the Divine nature. When we 
read that " the anger of the L,ord was kindled 
against Balaam ;" that " God is angry with the 



174 TH H LAMB OF GOD. 

wicked every day ;" " the indignation of the Lord 
is upon all nations ;" " the wrath of God is revealed 
from heaven against all unrighteousness," etc.; we 
are not to think of that malignant, passionate state 
of mind which so often saddens us when we view 
ourselves or our fellow men, but simply of that 
movement of the emotional nature toward the exe- 
cution of justice, which is essential to the moral 
government of the universe, to the holiness of God, 
and not less essential to His love. 

An eminent writer has said, " When God is dis- 
pleased with the sinner, he compassionately desires 
that the sinner may escape the displeasure, and in- 
vents a way of escaping it. But when man is dis- 
pleased with his fellow man, he does not desire that 
his fellow man may escape the displeasure, and 
devises no way of escape." 

It should be noted that in some cases in the 
Bible the terms wrath and anger, as applied to God, 
are employed to denote not merely emotion — per- 
haps not this at all — but rather judgment, condem- 
nation or punishment. " The wrath of God abideth 
on him." " [We] were by nature children of 
wrath." Several other Bible expressions illustrate 
this use of the term. 

With the foregoing explanations, such expres- 



IMMORTALITY. 1 75 

sions as we find in the Bible respecting Divine 
anger cannot awaken unpleasant thoughts of God, 
except, perhaps, in the minds of those who have 
occasion to dread His justice, and are unwilling to 
accept His mercy. 

There is scarcely an evidence of human deprav- 
ity more striking than the well-nigh universal abuse 
of the emotion of anger, resulting in the very in- 
justice and cruelty which it was designed to correct. 
Because of this abuse, the apostle could correctly 
say, " The wrath of man worketh not the righteous- 
ness of God/' There is scarcely a more satisfactory 
mark of the triumph of grace in the soul, than the 
habitual restraint of this emotion to the limits of its 
true purpose. " He that subdueth anger, is better 
than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit 
than he that taketh a city." 



APPENDIX D. 

IMMORTALITY. 

THAT all men, regardless of their relation to 
salvation, have souls which live and ex- 
ercise the powers of thought, feeling and volition, 
even when separated from the body ; and that these 
souls continue to exist, and to exercise their powers 



176 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

forever, has been the belief of the church in all ages. 
This belief rests upon plain Scripture statement. 

That there is a soul distinct from the body, and 
capable of existing apart from it is taught in such 
passages as the following : 

I. Ki. 17. 21, 22. "And he stretched himself 
upon the child three times, and cried unto the Lord 
and said, O Lord, my God, I pray thee let this 
child's soul come into him again ; and the Lord 
heard the voice of Elijah ; and the soul of the child 
came into him again, and he revived." 

Micah 6. 7. " Shall I give * * the fruit of 
my body for the sin of my soul ?" 

Mat. 10. 28. " Fear not them which kill the 
body but are not able to kill the soul." 

Lu. 8. 55. "And her spirit came again, and 
she arose." 

Lu. 24. 2>7i 39- " They supposed they had seen 
a spirit." " A spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye 
see me have." 

Acts 7. 59. " Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." 

II. Cor. 4. 16. " For though our outward man 
perish, the inward man is renewed day by day." 

II. Cor. 5. 8. "We are confident, and willing 
rather to be absent from the body, and to be present 
with the Lord." 



IMMORTALITY. 1 77 

II. Cor. 12. 2. " Whether in the body or out of 
the body I cannot tell." 

Apart, therefore, from the evidences of natural 
religion and of science, which the Christian world 
has regarded as supporting the doctrine of our two- 
fold nature (and never more confidently than at. 
present), the above passages and many others have 
furnished a basis of belief, firm and impregnable 
because a part of the Divine revelation. 

Upon like evidence Christians have also confi- 
dently affirmed the soul's eternal conscious existence. 
Dan. 12. 3. "And they that be wise shall shine 
with the brightness of the firmament ; and they 
that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever 
and ever." 

Mat. 22. 32. "God is not the God of the dead 
but of the living." (Yet those to whom Jesus had 
just referred had long been dead physically.) 

Mat. 17. 3. "And behold there appeared unto 
them Moses and Klias, talking with them." 

Ivti. 16. 22, etc. (The account of the rich man 
and Lazarus.) 

IyU. 18. 30. "In the world to come, life ever- 
lasting." 

John 10. 28. " I give unto them eternal life, and 



178 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck 
thein out of my hand." 

Rev. 3 12. " Him that overcometh will I make 
a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go 
no more out." 

II. Thess. 4. 17. "And so shall we ever be with 
the Lord." 

Rev. 22. 5. "And they shall reign forever and 
ever." 

Statements like these, occurring frequently in 
the Holy Scriptures, are conclusive evidence of the 
endless life of the righteous. They of course 
embrace much more than the idea of endless con- 
sciousness, for they include that peculiar form of 
life, or state of the soul, which is the result of per- 
sonal salvation. But they none the less clearly in- 
clude the lower idea of endless consciousness. 

What is the testimony of the inspired record 
respecting the endless consciousness of the wicked ? 
This has already been set forth in Appendix A, of 
this volume, and references will not be repeated 
here. Those references have been regarded as con- 
clusive by Christians generally. Some persons are 
disposed to set them aside for this or that reason ; 
but as yet no very satisfactory argument is offered. 
The strongest is that which is based upon certain 



IMMORTALITY. 1 79 

texts that seem to teach the opposite idea, that the 
finally impenitent will cease to exist. 

" Yet a little while and the wicked shall not 
be." Ps. 37. IO > Ir " "I n that very day their 
thoughts perish." Ps. 146. 4. " There is no work, 
nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the 
grave." Eccl. 9. 10. " The enemies of the Lord 
shall be as the fat of lambs ; they shall consume ; 
into smoke shall they consume away." Ps. 37. 19, 
20. " All the proud, yea and all that do wickedly, 
shall be stubble, and the day that cometh shall 
burn them up * * that it shall leave them 
neither root nor branch." Mat. 4. 1. 

Of texts like these there is a considerable num- 
ber ; and apart from the setting in which they occur, 
or the evident design of the writer, they might have 
great weight against the doctrine of universal im- 
mortality. But upon careful examination and com- 
parison they are found to have little if any bearing 
upon that doctrine. 

Take the above quotations. " Yet a little while 
and the wicked shall not be." This and similar 
expressions in the same psalm would be strictly 
appropriate to the thought of the composer, if he 
had in mind only the fact that as a rule righteous 
men far outlive wicked men. They would also be 



180 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

appropriate if he had reference to the final triumph 
of righteousness on the earth. In either case the 
next statement, " Thou shalt diligently consider 
his place and it shall not be," would denote only the 
place of the wicked on earth. The wicked shall not 
exist on earth ; they shall die and be seen no more. 
No man, therefore, can safely assert that these ex- 
pressions have any reference at all to the soul, or to 
the ultimate extinction of a portion of the human 
race. 

" In that very day his thoughts perish." More 
fully, " Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son 
of man, in whom there is no help. His breath goeth 
forth, he returneth to his earth ; in that very day 
his thoughts perish." Here no distinction is made 
between the righteous and the wicked. The state- 
ment includes all mankind. If used to prove the 
extinction of the wicked, it will equally prove the 
extinction of the just. Evidently it has no refer- 
ence to the extinction of either. " His thoughts 
perish," simply means that at death his planning 
and scheming respecting earthly things are at an 
end, and he cannot be thy permanent helper. 

" There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, 
nor wisdom in the grave." This is a universal 
statement, applying equally to the righteous and 



IMMORTALITY. l8l 

the wicked. If it affirms extinction or an inactive 
and unconscious state of the wicked, it affirms the 
.same for the righteous. But the Bible makes clear 
the continued activity and consciousness of the 
righteous after death. Hence this passage cannot 
be justly taken as proving the opposite even for 
the wicked. A glance at the context plainly shows 
that it refers solely to earthly affairs, all human 
control of which ceases at the grave. 

" The enemies of the L,ord shall be as the fat of 
lambs ; they shall consume ; into smoke shall they 
consume away." If we could know that this text 
was intended to refer to cessation of soul life, it 
might seem very conclusive ; but when we read the 
verse which precedes it, we find it to be merely a 
promise that " in the days of famine " there shall be 
a difference between the righteous and the wicked, 
the latter perishing while the former are preserved. 

The text from Malachi, "All the proud and all 
that do wickedly shall be stubble," etc., is by no 
means necessarily to receive a literal interpretation. 
It certainly indicates the ultimate triumph of 
righteousness and extinction of wickedness in the 
earth, or at least in the Jewish nation to which it is 
addressed. The passage is highly figurative, and 
evidently so Probably no one thinks that the 



l82 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

wicked will be literally transformed into " stubble," 
or that they have roots and branches; nor is it 
probable that the "ashes" and the burning are 
here intended to denote a purely physical phe- 
nomenon and its result. The prophecy lacks the 
perfect clearness which characterizes the teachings 
of the Savior in relation to the final state of the 
wicked ; and to insist upon its denoting the final 
extinction of the wicked, body and soul, is not only 
to do violence to the just principles of interpreta- 
tion, but to make it contradict or interpret the 
teachings of our blessed L,ord, either of which 
would be an error. 

These examples illustrate the danger of relying 
upon isolated texts, however numerous they may 
be ; since every one of them, rightly understood, 
may embody a very different thought from what it 
seemed at first to convey. 

It is very significant that the immortality of the 
soul, though questioned by materialists of every 
age, has been uniformly held by Christian scholars, 
with very few exceptions. The endless conscious 
existence of the righteous no Christian seems to 
wish to call in question. Some do question that 
of the wicked. But the chief authority for both is 
the Bible. To question either is to question the 



TOTAL DEPRAVITY AND ORIGINAL SIN. 1 83 

authority of the Scriptures. To reject either is to 
reject that authority, and exalt in its place the 
reason of men. Alas for such trifling with the 
great concerns of eternity ! 

Note. — The word immortality is here used in 
its popular sense, as denoting endless conscious 
existence. Some persons use it as denoting death- 
lessness in every sense, whether physical or spirit- 
ual In this sense no human being can be called 
immoital until after the resurrection and judg- 
ment ; and then only the righteous ; for then the 
wicked will be in the state of spiritual death as 
defined in Chapter III. of this volume. In this 
sense also Christ Himself was not immortal until 
after His resurrection. This use of the words 
" immortal " and " immortality " may be quite ad- 
admissible, but I have not thought it needful to 
adopt it. 



APPENDIX E. 
total depravity and original sin. 
T^HRHAPS the Scriptural evidences of the state 
* of man in the fall, apart from the gracious work 
of redemption, have been sufficiently set forth in the 
early chapters of this volume ; but I wish to group 



1 84 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

them here for easy reference, and show the pro- 
priety or impropriety of the above terms, and the 
doctrines denoted by them. 

The Bible clearly teaches that in the fall man 
lost the Divine image in which he had been cre- 
ated. " Them He did predestinate to be conformed 
to the image of His Son." Rom. 8. 29. " As we 
have borne the image of the earthly, we shall also 
bear the image of the heavenly." I. Cor. 15. 49. 
" But we all with open face [believers are ad- 
dressed] beholding as in a glass the glory of the 
Lord, are changed to the same image from glory to 
glory as by the Spirit of the Lord." II. Cor. 3. 18. 
" Ye have put on the new man which is renewed 
in knowledge after the image of Him that created 
him." Col. 3. 10. "I shall be satisfied, when I 
awake, with thy likeness." Ps. 17. 15. "Be ye 
not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed 
by the renewing of your mind." Rom. 12. 2. 

If the work of redemption is to bring believers 
into the likeness of the Son, who is the express 
image of the Father's person (Heb. 1. 3), it is be- 
yond all doubt that in the fall man lost that image, 
and that the unconverted do not bear that image. 
Its restoration begins, to the sinner, in regeneration. 
" If any man be in Christ, he is new creature." II. 



TOTAL DEPRAVITY AND ORIGINAL SIN. 1 85 

Cor. 5. 17. It is complete in the resurrection. 
" Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth 
not yet appear what we shall be ; but we know 
that when He shall appear we shall be like Him ; 
for we shall see Him as he is." I. John 3. 2. Those, 
therefore, who assert that the Divine image was 
not lost when the penalty of death was visited upon 
the transgressor, contradict the plain teachings of 
the inspired record. 

Observe the following Bible description of man 
apart from grace : " What then, are we better than 
they ? No, in no wise : for we have before proved 
both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin ; 
As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: 
there is none that understandeth, there is none 
that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of 
the way, they are together become unprofitable; 
there is none that doeth good, no, not one." Thus 
far the negative description, now the positive. 
" Their throat is an open scpulcher ; with their 
tongues they have used deceit ; the poison of asps 
is under their lips ; Whose mouth is full of curs- 
ing and bitterness ; Their feet are swift to shed 
blood : Destruction and misery are in their ways ; 
And the way of peace have they not known : There 
is no fear of God before their eyes. Now we know 



1 86 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

that whatsoever things the law saith, it saith to 
them who are under the law, that every mouth 
may be stopped, and all the world may become 
guilty before God." Rom. 3. 9-19. 

This is a most melancholy picture of the state 
of death, which is the wages of sin. But " it is 
written" and cannot pass away. It clearly repre- 
sents the unregenerate as neither able nor inclined 
to seek God ; and this charge is confirmed beyond 
all doubt by the words of our blessed Savior : " No 
man cometh unto the Father but by me ; and no 
man cometh unto me, except the Father which hath 
sent me draw him." John 6. 44. The statement 
of Paul (I. Cor. 2. 14), as positively asserts the same 
truth in another aspect of it : " The natural man 
receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God ; for 
they are foolishness unto him ; neither can he know 
them, because they are spiritually discerned." By 
the "natural man," Paul means not the "animal 
man" some have imagined, but the whole man, 
rational, intelligent, but considered in himself 
alone, apart from the effectual work of redemption. 
Paul frequently uses " the flesh " in the same sense. 
" In me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good 
thing." Rom. 7. 18. " They that are in the flesh 
cannot please God." Rom. 8. 8. " The flesh lust- 



TOTAL DEPRAVITY AND ORIGINAL SIN. 1 87 

eth against the Spirit." Gal. 5. 17. "The works 
of the flesh are manifest, which are adultery, forni- 
cation, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witch- 
craft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, 
seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunken- 
ness, revellings, and such like." Gal. 5. 19. In 
which of these works does a man resemble God ? 
Or which of them is a movement toward God ? It 
is needless to add anything more to prove that the 
sinner is neither able nor inclined to seek God or 
to keep His law by virtue of anything which be- 
longs to him as a child of Adam, a natural man. 

How then do we account for so much that is 
commendable and even lovely in some persons who 
are unconverted ? " I, if I be lifted up from the 
earth, will draw all men unto me." John 12. 32. 
This explains it, and it is God^s explanation. But 
it has been so fully presented in Chapters XVII, 
XVIII, that we will not repeat here the proofs, but 
only reaffirm that whatever godliness or goodness 
there is in any man is the result of the Savior's 
work for him. 

The Society of Friends, and some other evan- 
gelical Christians discard the term " total deprav- 
ity ;" not because it does not properly express the 
hopeless, helpless state of the sinner, when consid- 



1 88 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

ered apart from the blessings of redemption ; for 
the term is no stronger than the statements of Scrip- 
ture fully warrant : but because those who use the 
term apply it (or seem to apply it) to persons in 
whom some of the influences of grace are yet effi- 
cient. Any such application is unjust toward God. 
If Paul had said, " I know that in me dwelleth no 
good thing," he would have denied the work of 
grace in him. He would also have dishonored the 
Holy Ghost ; for he himself taught that the Chris- 
tian is the temple of God. (I. Cor. 3. 16, 17, 19.) 
But Paul carefully guards this point by saying, u I 
know that in me, that is ) in my flesh" the natural 
man considered apart from the work of grace, 
" dwelleth no good thing." If those who use the 
term " total depravity" were as careful in limiting 
its application, its use might be quite unobjection- 
able. But to apply it without qualification to infants, 
in whom (as we have shown in Chapter XVII), 
the unconditional benefits of the Atonement are 
operative, or even to the unrepentant sinner, in 
whom some of these may yet remain in some degree 
operative, is to misrepresent both God and man. 
To represent man as having in himself, by nature, 
any power or disposition to please God, would be 
utterly contrary to the Divine word. On the other 



TOTAI, DEPRAVITY AND ORIGINAL SIN. 1 89 

hand, to deny that all men, in virtue of the work 
of Christ for them, and of the Holy Ghost within 
them, have power to choose life, to come to repent- 
ance, to believe and be saved, is to dishonor Father, 
Son and Holy Spirit, and the teachings and invita- 
tions of Scripture. Both errors should be carefully 
avoided. 

As to " original sin," the Bible teaches that the 
posterity of Adam were and are by nature like their 
fallen parent Gen. 5. 3 " Adam * * begat a 
son in his own likeness, after his image." This 
was fallen Adam, who, as we have just shown, was 
no longer in the image of God. 

The question may be asked, Had not Adam by 
this time exercised saving faith and become regen- 
erate , and if so would not his offspring have spirit- 
ual life by natural law ? Or, may not Adam have 
become a thoroughly sanctified man, and if so 
would not his sons who were born after this, be not 
only spiritually alive, but holy ? The answer to 
both these questions must be negative. " The gift 
of God is eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord." 
Rom. 6. 23. " By grace are ye saved, through faith, 
and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God." 
Eph. 2. 8. Salvation, which includes life from the 
dead, is the direct gift of God in every instance ; 



190 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

He has never made man the medium of its impar- 
tation, by heredity or otherwise. " L,ook unto me, 
and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am 
God, and there is none else." Is. 45. 22. " Neither 
is there salvation in any other" Acts 4. 12. 

Every child inherits, by nature, a strong ten- 
dency, or disposition toward sin. If the term " orig- 
inal sin " meant nothing more than this, it would 
be an allowable expression. But it usually indicates 
also that every child is guilty and under condemna- 
tion because of Adam's sin. This we have shown 
(Chapters V. and XVII.) not to be the teaching of 
Scripture. Since the term, then, usually carries 
with it an unscriptural idea, Friends and some other 
evangelical Christians have discarded it altogether. 
They do not claim that the infant is inwardly and 
perfectly holy, though to it is imparted, as a gift 
from God through Christ, a measure of spiritual 
life. There is the inherited disposition to sin — the 
indwelling sin of Romans 7th — to be destroyed by 
the baptism with the Holy Ghost and fire. Yet the 
infant is not guilty and condemned, but alive, and 
thus far saved, as a necessary result of the Atone- 
ment. When the child reaches the age of under- 
standing and accountability, and transgresses known 
law, he comes at once under condemnation and 



THE DIVINE FATHERHOOD. 191 

penalty as did Adam. The doctrine of original sin, 
as embracing the guilt of infants and the damnation 
of any such as die in infancy, is, let us hope, a thing 
of the past. 



APPENDIX F. 

THE DIVINE FATHERHOOD. 

THE assumption that the Fatherhood of God ex- 
tends over the entire human family, regardless 
of their spiritual state, has led to such gross miscon- 
ceptions of the Divine character, of human charac- 
ter, of the Holy Scriptures, and of the doctrines of 
Christianity, that it seems proper here to call atten- 
tion to it, and to show in how far it has any Scrip- 
tural foundation. The Bible student may observe : 

1 — That a very small number of texts seem to 
teach, plainly and purposely, the universal Divine 
Fatherhood. "As certain also of ypur own poets 
have said, ( For we are also His offspring. Foras- 
much, then, as we are the offspring of God,' " etc. 
Acts 17. 28 29. " One God and Father of all, who 
is over all, and through all, and in all." Eph. 4. 6. 

2 — That a few texts represent the Israelitish 
nation as a son, God being its Father. See Is. 
63. 16; Jer. 3. 19, 22; 31. 9; Mai. 1. 6. 

3 — That the New Testament, in its manifold 



192 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

allusions to the Fatherhood of God, in those cases 
where the words " our Father " and " your Father " 
are used, contemplates believers only, these being 
the classes addressed. See Jesus' own use of these 
expressions, twenty times in Matthew, two in Mark, 
four in Luke, and one in John. The apostles use 
the same twenty-one times in the epistles, always 
referring to believers. 

4 — That Jesus emphatically denies the claim of 
the unbelieving Jews, that God was their Father. 
"If God were your Father, ye would love me." 
" Ye are of your father, the Devil, and the lusts of 
your father ye will do." " He that is of God, hear- 
eth God's words ; ye therefore hear them not, 
because ye are not of God." See Jno. 8. 41-49. 
Compare I. Jno. 3. 8. " He that committeth sin is 
of the Devil ; Acts 13. 10. " O, full of all subtilty 
and all mischief, thou child of the Devil ; " and 
Mat. 13. 88, "The tares are the children of the 
Wicked One." 

5 — That the gospel is an invitation to those 
who are in the kingdom and fatherhood of the Evil 
One to abandon this for the kingdom and Father- 
hood of God. " Come out from among them, and 
be ye separate, and touch not the unclean thing, 
and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto 



THE DIVINE FATHERHOOD. 1 93 

you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith 
the Lord Almighty." II. Cor. 6. 17, 18. "As- 
many as received Him, to them gave He power to- 
become the sons of God, even to them that believe 
on His name." John 1. 12. " Behold what manner 
of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we 
should be called the sons of God ; therefore the 
world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not." 
I. Jno. 3. 1. "As many as are led by the Spirit of 
God, they are the sons of God." Rom. 8. 14. " Ex- 
cept a man be born from above, he shall not see 
the kingdom of God." John 3. 3. 

A careful examination brings us to these con- 
clusions : 

1 — That in the sense of Creator, Provider and 
Upholder, God is the Father of all men. 

2 — That it is not in this sense that Jesus speaks 
of His Fatherhood, but in a very different and a 
higher sense, denoting spiritual likeness and union, 
through spiritual life. 

3 — That this likeness and union existed in 
Adam before the fall, and hence he is said to have 
been a son of God. L,u. 3. ^8. 

4 — That infants, because of the atonement, 
have, in a degree at least, this likeness and union, 



194 TH E LAMB OF GOD. 

and thus hold, through Christ, a filial relation to 
God. 

5 — That when one has become "dead through 
trespasses," the life, likeness and union which 
form the ground of this filial relation with God, are 
gone, and that the sinner cannot truthfully call God 
his Father in the Gospel sense, except by being 
"born again," through "repentance toward God 
and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ." 

These conclusions being fully sustained by the 
teachings of Scripture, it is clear that any system 
of religious belief based upon the universal and 
equal Fatherhood of God over saint and sinner, 
rests upon a false foundation. It is also evident 
that a man or woman who has not exercised 
repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus 
Christ, and who nevertheless looks for salvation 
because God is his Father, is under a delusion. 
Yet thousands are yet in this condition ; and thou- 
sands of sinners resting in this false assumption, 
claim to trust in God, while walking in their own 
lusts. " God is not the God of the dead, but of the 
living ; " and His word to sinners is, " Return unto 
me and live." 

May those who attempt to declare the gospel, 
observe and follow its plain teachings upon this 



THREE IN ONE. 1 95 

important subject, and not lull, by false hopes, 
those whom they are expected to awaken and save. 
The love of God is all the more wonderful and 
soul-tendering when this subject is viewed in its 
Scriptural aspect. 



APPENDIX G. 

THREE IN ONE. 

HERB again is a question oifact, in which reason 
can be of little value, but on which we have 
the plain testimony of the inspired record. 

1 — Father, Son and Holy Spirit are distinctly 
spoken of, as if each were a distinct personality. 

"And Jesus, when He was baptized, went up 
straightway out of the water ; and lo, the heavens 
were opened unto Him, and He saw the Spirit of 
God descending like a dove, and lighting upon Him ; 
and lo, a voice from heaven, saying, This is my 
beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."* u Go 
ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them 
in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of 
the Holy Ghost." t u But the Comforter, the Holy 
Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, He 
shall teach you all things, and bring all things to 

*Mat. 3. 16, 17. See also Mk. 1. 9-11; Lu. 3. 21, 22; John i # 
32-34. fMat. 28. 19. 



196 



THE LAMB OF GOD. 



your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto 
you."* "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and 
the love of God, and the communion of the Holy 
Ghost, be with you all."f " For through Him we 
both have access, by one Spirit, unto the Father. "J 
" Christ, who through the eternal Spirit, offered 
Himself without spot to God,"§ etc. 

2 — All the essential attributes of a distinct per- 
sonality are applied to each — Intellect, Sensibility, 
Will, Freedom, Power, Expression. It is said of 



The Father, 



The Son, 



1 ' God saw that it ' ' Jesus knew their 



was good." 

Gen. 1. 



10. 



" God so loved the 
world." 

John 3. 16. 



thoughts. ' ' 

Mat. 12. 25. 

' ' When Jesus saw it, 
He was much dis- 
pleased. ' ' 

Mk. 10. 14. 

He hath done ,< T -,•-, . 

, , tt Jesus did not com 

w h a t s o ever H e 

hath pleased.' 



Ps. 115. 3 

1 ' God created the 
heavens and the 
earth." Gen. 1. 1. 

11 God said, Let there 
be light." 

Gen. 1. 3. 



The Holy Spirit, 

"He shall testify of 
me." John 15. 26. 

' ' For the love of the 
Spirit." 

Rom. 15. 30. 

' ' Maketh interces- 
sion for us. ' ' 

Rom. 8. 26. 

' 'Helpeth our infirm- 

mit Himself unto ..gf^^ J%\ 

Holy Ghost." 

Rom. 15. 13. 
' ' The Spirit speak- 
eth expressly." 

2 Tim. 4. 1. 
' ' Dividing to every 
man severally as 
He will." 

1 Cor. 12. 11. 



them, because He 
knew all men." 

John 2. 24. 

1 ' By whom are all 
things. ' ' 

Rom. 8. 6. 



Jesus said unto 
Him." Mat. 4. 7. 



These illustrative texts (a few out of many), 
clearly show the truth of the above proposition. 

*John 14. 26; see John 15. 26. f2 Cor. 13. 14. JEph. 2. 18. 
£Heb. 9. 14. 



THREE IN ONE. 



197 



3 — To each of the three are ascribed the same 
Divine character and attributes. 



Omnipresence.. 
Omniscience ... 
Omnipotence... 

Eternity 

Holiness 

Goodness 

Creative power 



To Father. 


Eph. 1, 


23. 


Acts 1. 


24. 


Mat. 19 


. 26. 


1 Tim. 


1. 17. 


Mat. 19 


• 17. 


James 1 


. 17. 


Gen. 1. 


27. 



To Son. 
Mat. 18. 20. 
John 6. 64. 
Heb. 1. 3. 
Col. 1. 17. 
Mk. 1. 24. 
Acts 10. 38. 
Heb. 1. 2. 



To Holy Ghost. 
1 Cor. 3. 16. 
1 Cor. 2. 10. 
1 Cor. 7. 4-11. 
Heb. 9. 14. 
His title. 
Ps. 143, 10. 
Job 33. 4. 



4 — It is distinctly declared that there is one 
God, and that these three are One. 

" There is none other God but one." 1 Cor. 8. 4. 

" Hear, O Israel, the L,ord our God is one L,ord." 
Deut. 6. 4. 

" One God and Father of all, who is above all, 
and through all, and in all." Bp. 4. 6. 

" Thou believest that there is one God ; thou 
doest well." James 2. 19. 

u There are three that bear record in heaven, 
the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and 
these three are one." 1 John 5. 7. 

Since all of these four points are the subject of 
direct Scripture testimony, all are to be fully ac- 
cepted as true — the personality, the distinctness, 
the equality, the oneness, 

Hczv the three are one, the Scripture leaves 
unexplained ; and many a serious error has resulted 
from the attempts of men to resolve the mystery. 



198 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

Some have said that u there is but one Person, man- 
ifesting Himself in three influences, operations or 
offices. " Such a belief does away the personality 
of the Son and the Holy Spirit, and thus does vio- 
lence to the plain and oft-repeated testimony of 
Scripture. Some have partly avoided this last 
difficulty by attributing personality and Godhead to 
Jesus Christ, as the One God, thus doing away the 
personality of the Father and the Holy Spirit. 
Some have boldly made the Son and the Holy 
Ghost created and subordinate beings. To some 
the proper view of the subject, which honors all 
Bible testimony and rejects none, is this : that 
Father, Son and Holy Spirit are distinct personal- 
ities, yet so essentially the same in nature and attri- 
butes, character and purpose, that it cannot possibly 
be said that there are three Gods. This view honors 
the Son even as it honors the Father,* and does not 
degrade the Holy Spirit to be a mere influence or 
emanation from God. It becomes, moreover, a most 
precious and helpful doctrine to the true believer, 
ministering to tenderness, gentleness and love, and 
to all the Christian graces. Yet even this view pre- 
sents difficulties to the mind, and we are fain to 
leave the matter where the Gospel leaves it, believ- 

*John 5. 22, 23. 



AN EARLY REVELATION. 1 99 

ing fully the personality and yet the oneness of 
Father, Son and Holy Ghost. I quote from Dougan 
Clark the words of Mansell, " We know that God is 
three in one because that is revealed. We do not 
know how He is three in one, because that is not 
revealed, and we can know it in no other way." 



APPENDIX H. 

AN EARLY REVELATION. 

THE identity of human nature from age to age, 
the nature of salvation, the unchanging love 
of God, and the fact that the fall took place in our 
first parents, form strong presumptive evidence of 
a clear, early revelation of the plan of salvation. 
Salvation is essentially the same in pauper and 
prince, in the savage and the sage. There is but 
one way of salvation, repentance toward God and 
faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Salvation may, it 
is true, take place upon widely different moral and 
intellectual planes ; otherwise it could not be offered 
to all. But in every case of a sinner's being saved 
there is the knowledge of sin, the sense of condem- 
nation for sin, the desire for deliverance, the turn- 
ing from sin and self to seek after God, and the 
faith which lays hold on God's appointed means, 
even in the absence of any true conception of what 



200 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

that means is. If Adam, Eve, Abel, Seth, Enoch, 
Abraham, became children of God after transgres- 
sion, all these conditions must have been present ; 
and to their longing souls God must, in considera- 
tion of His purpose in Christ, have given concep- 
tions of that purpose, sufficiently clear to serve as 
an incentive to hope, and a ground of faith. Hap- 
pily we have much more than presumptive evi- 
dence upon this interesting theme. 

Some writers upon religion are so fully com- 
mitted to the idea of evolution, that they assume, 
or assert, the various religions of the world to have 
been so many links in a complete chain of evolu- 
tion, Christianity being the latest, and thus far the 
highest. Such writers appear to assume the feeble- 
ness and ignorance of the race in earliest times, 
and forget that " there were giants in the earth in 
those days," intellectual giants, moral giants, spir- 
itual giants, as well as physical giants. 

It will not do to liken the early inhabitants of 
the world to the benighted savages of our day. 
These, through the unfaithfulness of their more 
favored brethren or their ancestors, are destitute of 
light which the ante-diluvian world, in the very 
ature of things, must have possessed, and which 
we have proof that it did possess. Before the flood 



AN EARLY REVELATION. 201 

the one great transaction of history was the fall. 
This was no myth, but a tremendous reality. Of 
its awful significance, no doubt those who suffered 
it had a very clear apprehension. A striking evi- 
dence of this is found in the sad, though selfish 
complaint of Cain, " And from thy face shall I be 
hid." Here is set forth with unmistakable clear- 
ness the essential character of the Divinely ap- 
pointed penalty for transgression. [See Gen. 4. 14]. 
The sad story of the fall must have been handed 
down, with solemn interest, from age to age. Adam 
himself lived to tell it to L,amech through 86 years 
of the latter's boyhood ; and L,amech was the father 
of Noah. 

But along with this melancholy story went a 
very different one, the story of a promised redemp- 
tion. Worship was taught and practised. A ritual 
accompanied it — the offering of sacrifice with blood. 
In Genesis, the record of the first sixteen centuries 
is embraced in six brief chapters. One of these is 
devoted to the fall, the promise of a victorious 
Savior, and an adequate covering provided for the 
sinning pair. Is it too much to believe that with 
the promise of a Savior there came clear light on 
the means of redemption and the manner of it ? Is 
it too much to believe that the " coats of skins," 



202 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

taken from slain beasts, were designed to teach and 
did teach those first sinners that they could only 
be shielded from Divine punishment by the death 
of another for them? Is it too much to believe 
that just here God laid the foundation of the sys- 
tem of expiatory sacrifice, a type by which the suf- 
fering of the Son of God should be kept in remem- 
brance until He should be visibly offered up ? 

In Genesis 4th chapter we mark the name of 
Eve's first-born son, " Gotten," for this is what 
" Cain " signifies. One naturally suspects that, 
with the promise of a Savior still running in her 
mind, she thought of her son as the fulfillment of 
that promise. Be that as it may, we cannot read 
the following story of Cain's and Abel's offerings 
without being impressed with the responsibility of 
these two men for the character of their offerings. 
This responsibility must have rested upon previous 
enlightenment The Lord's reproof of Cain, " If thou 
doest well, shalt thou not be accepted ?" is followed 
by a most loving suggestion of the means of grace : 
" And if thou doest not well, a sin offering couch- 
eth at the door ; and its desire shall be to thee, but 
thou shalt rule over it." The whole transaction, 
and these wonderful words, must have been big 
with meaning to those two brethren. 



AN EARLY REVELATION. 203 

Expiation is plainly taught in the book of Job, 
which is older than the Mosaic law. It is taught 
in the story of Balak and Balaam, which is as old 
as the fourth book of the Pentateuch. It was 
taught nearly five centuries earlier by Abraham 
to Isaac. It has been taught in heathen nations 
generally. 

Side by side with this important though often 
gravely misapprehended doctrine, has been that of 
salvation by a Messiah — a personal, superhuman 
character to come. Worldly men have looked for a 
deliverer of their nation or tribe from the power of 
other nations or tribes. Devout men have looked 
for a Savior from the penal consequences of sin, 
and from the power of sin. 

But the New Testament affords, perhaps, the 
clearest evidence of an early revelation. Our 
Savior attributes to Abraham a clear knowledge 
of His coming and His work when He says, "Abra- 
ham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was 
glad." To say that Abraham foresaw our Savior 
only as " the promised Seed " in whom the families 
of the earth should be [in some way] blessed, and 
not as the Lamb of God, whose sacrifice should be 
the atonement for sin, would be a great injustice. 
For our Savior, in speaking of His office as the 



204 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

Messiah, always had in mind His suffering for the 
sins of the world as a sacrifice appointed and 
accepted by the Father. See Jno. 3. 14, 15 ; 8. 28 ; 
12. 32, and many others. The Holy Ghost, by the 
mouth of Peter, in the clearest, strongest manner, 
attributes to David a foreknowledge of the great 
transaction. See Acts 2. 25-35. 

The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews gives 
unmistakable testimony to the same knowledge on 
the part of the holy men of earlier times, beginning 
his list with Abel (Heb. n.). After naming Enoch, 
Noah, Abraham and Sarah, he says, " These all 
died in faith." These and the persons mentioned 
later in the chapter, the writer evidently regarded 
as saints, saved by grace through faith. His testi- 
mony on this point is clear. But he also regarded 
saving faith as including more than the incipient 
faith which he mentions in verse 6 : " He that 
cometh to God must first believe that He is, and 
that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek 
Him." " Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and 
thou shalt be saved," was Paul's own word to the 
Philippian jailer. To him the faith which brings 
justification, is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ 
"sacrificed for us." He teaches no other doctrine 
as applicable to any age ; and here, in the epistle 



AN EARXY REVELATION. 205 

to the Hebrews, where this doctrine is made very 
clear, he affirms of these holy men of old, that they 
had not received the promises (that is, in fulfill- 
ment), but that they had " seen them afar off and 
were persuaded of them and embraced them." 
Peter bears similar testimony (I. Pet. 1. 10, n) 
where he says, " Of which salvation the prophets 
have inquired and searched diligently, who prophe- 
sied of the grace that should come unto you ; 
searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit 
of Christ which was in them did signify, when it 
testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the 
glory that should follow." These apostles, like the 
prophets of old, "spake as they were moved by the 
Holy Ghost." Their testimony is, therefore, unim- 
peachable and conclusive, as to an early, clear reve- 
lation of the plan of redemption in all its essential 
features. It is only with reference to the unfolding 
of its circumstances, time, place and other historic 
relations, that the idea of evolution can be properly 
applied to the plan of redemption ; and this is p 
question of relatively little importance. 



206 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

APPENDIX I. 

DIVINE PASSIBIUTY. 

PASSIBIIJTY is the capability of feeling or 
suffering. The question is raised, " Could 
Deity suffer?" Unbelief blindly asserts that if 
Christ is God, as Christians affirm, and if Christ 
died, then God was dead, and the universe was for 
a time without a governor. 

The foolishness of such reasoning appears, wherj 
we consider that Christians also affirm Christ to be, 
God the Son ; that at His death He commended His 
spirit to God the Father ; and that the death which 
He suffered in atoning for sin, was not extinction^ 
nor a cessation of thought, feeling and volition ; but 
" destruction from the presence of God [the Father] 
and from the glory of His power,'' the precise pen- 
alty, in kind, which awaits all the finally impenitent, 
and which is already the punishment of fallen 
angels ; and that His physical death merely marked 
the awful depth and completion of Atonement suf- 
fering. 

Any one who will properly observe these four 
points will see that there is no ground whatever for 
the above mentioned cavil. Yet to meet this cavil, 
some Christians apparently not well informed on 
these points, have endeavored to separate between 



DIVINE PASSIBIUTY. 20 7 

the human and the Divine in our Savior, and have 
attributed all His suffering to the human part alone. 
They have asserted that Divinity did not and could 
not suffer ; and have quoted in their support a say- 
ing of the " fathers," " He died as He was man, but 
died not as He was God," an expression never in- 
tended to be thus abused. When asked, " How can 
we have in the great sacrifice a propitiation for the 
whole world, if only a human being suffered ? they 
have answered, that although only the humanity of 
Christ could suffer, His sufferings derive an infinite 
value from the intimate union of His humanity 
with His Divinity, an explanation which does not 
explain, or which, at least, does not prove Divine 
impassibility. 

"What God hath joined together let not man 
put asunder." " It is Christ that died ;" and Christ 
was at once God and man, in mysterious and won- 
derful union. This is the Messiah who was the 
subject of type and prophecy, and promise, and 
apostolic testimony ; and none of these, I think, 
warrant us in making such divisions or distinctions 
as would preclude the belief that the Godhead suf- 
fered. 

There may be in us an aversion to thinking 
that God could suffer ; yet, as set forth in the 



208 THE UMB OF GOD. 

Scriptures, it is not unreasonable. If in other 
respects the Almighty subjects Himself to limita- 
tions, why not in this ? We say God is omnipresent ; 
yet there is certainly a moral realm from which He 
withholds His presence, or from which He is ex- 
cluded. Otherwise He could not say, " Behold I 
stand at the door and knock." We say that He is 
omnipotent ; yet He has placed a limitation upon 
the exercise of His own power, by creating moral 
beings who may resist His will. We say that He is 
absolutely free ; yet He has put Himself under obli- 
gation by His promises. He has freely offered to 
be bound by a covenant. Every man acknowledges 
this when he performs the conditions of a Divine 
promise and expects its fulfillment. 

Why then may not such a One place Himself 
under such conditions as would make it possible for 
Him to suffer ? Is such a thought more difficult 
than that of the incarnation, which, though we can- 
not understand it, we yet believe in as a fact ? 

But what saith the Scripture ? 

i — Observe that pleasure, grief and other emo- 
tions are, thoughout the Scriptures, attributed to 
the Divine Being ;* and that He is constantly pre- 

*(a) Iyove. Jno. 3. 16; 17. 24. (b) Hate. Is. 61. 8; Zech. 8. 
17. (c) Joy. Mk. 8. 10; Ps. 149. 4; Is. 53. 10. (d) Pain^ 
Ps. 78. 40; Zech. 4. 30. 



DIVINE PASSIBILITY. 209 

sented to us as a personality exercising thought, 
feeling and volition. Divest Him of this person- 
ality, and love to God becomes quite impossible, 

2 — Note the unequivocal language in which the 
Epistle to the Hebrews declares the Deity of Christ: 
" But unto the Son He saith, Thy throne, O God, 
is forever and ever."* " And, Thou, L,ord, in the 
beginning has laid the foundation of the earth, and 
the heavens are the works of thy hands, "f Observe 
that this harmonizes exactly with Jesus' own decla- 
rations respecting Himself. u If David then call 
Him Iyord, how is He his son ?J " I and my Father 
are one."§ Observe also that this is the same being 
of whom the apostle states, that He " was made a 
little lower than the angels for the suffering of 
death, that He by the grace of God should taste 
death for every man."** And again, "It became 
Him for whom are all things, and by whom are all 
things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make 
the Captain of their salvation perfect through suf- 
fering vs. "ft And further, " Inasmuch then as the 
children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also 
Himself likewise took part of the same, that through 
death He might destroy him that had the power of 
death."tt 

*Heb. 1. 8. fHeb. 1. 10. JMat. 22. 45. gjno. 10. 30. **Heb. 
2. 9. tfHeb. 2. 10. i±Heb. 2. 14. 



2IO THE LAMB OF GOD. 

Who is the Captain of our salvation, a human 
being or God ? And who suffered for us, a finite 
being or an Infinite ? And who purposely partook 
of flesh and blood, " that through death He might 
destroy him that had the power of death ?" Was it 
humanity or Divinity ? It seems impossible that 
any impartial person should read the Epistle to the 
Hebrews, and doubt for a moment that it declares 
in the most clear and positive manner, that the 
Atonement suffering which purchased salvation for 
us, was endured by God the Son in His own Divine 
person and character. 

This view is supported by much other Scripture, 
and antagonizes none. It abounds in assurance to 
the seeking soul. It calls forth the endless and 
ever deepening gratitude of the redeemed. It throws 
a flood of light upon Scripture teaching. It satisfies 
perfectly the demands of fallen humanity. Finally, 
it more highlv exalts God in our love and esteem 
than any other conception of the Atonement ; 
because : 

i — It exhibits more clearly and perfectly the 
absolute, unchanging justice of God. 

2 — It indicates more perfectly His holiness, and 
His abhorrence of sin. 



THE UNPARDONABLE SIN. 211 

3 — It exalts beyond all comparison His wisdom, 
power and love. 

4 — It presents the Savior in all His infinite 
majesty as the sympathizing friend whom we need 
in temptation. 

5 — It exhibits as nothing else can do, the bound- 
less sufficiency of the Atonement for salvation. 



APPENDIX J. 

THE UNPARDONABLE SIN. 

ONE specific sin alone is mentioned in the New 
Testament as being in its very nature be- 
yond the power of pardon, viz. : the blasphemy 
against the Holy Spirit. Mat. 12. 31, 32 ; Mk. 3. 
28, 29; Eu. 12. 10. The words of Christ, "neither 
in this world, nor in that which is to come," are an 
emphatic never. Even if we substitute the word 
age for the word " world," and if we regard the ex- 
pression as proverbial in the time of our Savior, we 
are in simple justice bound to admit that the words 
mean never. Mark evidently understood it so, for 
he plainly says, " hath never forgiveness.' 

It is important to know what this sin is, partly 
because sincere inquirers, and even devout be- 
lievers, are sometimes tempted to think they have 
committed this sin, when they have not. This sin 



212 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

" was a direct insult, abuse, or evil speaking against 
the Holy Ghost." c It was a wanton and blas- 
phemous attack on the Divine power and nature of 
Christ," or rather i( against the Spirit by which He 
wrought His miracles." [Barnes on Mat. 12, 31, 
32.] It is a great mistake to regard every sin 
against the Holy Spirit as blasphemy against the 
Holy Spirit. For anyone who is truly desirous of 
knowing and doing the will of God, to imagine 
that he has committed this sin, is therefore only a 
delusion of the Enemy, and should not be indulged 
for a moment by such a one. Yet those who are 
truly awakened and desirous of salvation, are more 
likely to entertain the thought than any other 
class of persons. The reason is plain. When 
a soul is truly in earnest about its salvation, and 
the answer to prayer seems to be delayed, or some 
other form of trial comes, Satan is ready and eager 
to suggest that this individual soul has committed 
the unpardonable sin. Let no seeking soul be 
taken in such a snare, and suffer needlessly. Still 
it is well for those who willingly indulge in sin, to 
be reminded that, " From its very nature, every sin 
tends toward blasphemy, and every blasphemy to- 
ward blasphemy against the Holy Spirit." Doubt- 
less many will be finally condemned who have not 



ERRORS ABOUT THE BLOOD. 213 

formally committed this sin. " Except ye be con- 
verted and become as little children, ye shall not 
enter into the kingdom of heaven." " Repent and 
be converted, that your sins may be blotted out." 



. . 



APPENDIX K. 

ERRORS ABOUT THE BLOOD. 

IN the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, among 
many other Roman Catholic devices, is a paint- 
ing which represents Jesus upon the cross ; a large 
stream of blood, like the stream of water from a 
pump, spouting from His side into a stone trough ; 
and a pious monk stooping to the trough to fill his 
pitcher. 

Such gross and flagrant misrepresentations of 
Scripture truth are revolting to all well-instructed 
Christians. Yet many Protestants — not many minis- 
ters, perhaps — use expressions almost as misleading 
as this foolish picture. " O for one drop of the 
Savior's blood ! " "O now I see the crimson tide." 
" The cleansing stream I see, I see ; I plunge and 
lo ! it cleanses me ! " " Now I feel the blood ap- 
plied." These and numerous like expressions are 
liable to obscure rather than to impress the. great 
central truth of Christianity. Some of these expres- 
sions are perhaps based upon figures used in the 



214 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

Bible, and are harmless — nay, even helpful — to such 
as know their figurative meaning. The mistake 
lies in using them when plain, unngured statement 
is needed, or where the literal facts upon which the 
figures are based are not well understood. Such 
expressions thus serve to develop the unscriptural 
idea of a mechanical application of material blood 
for the cleansing of a soul. 

In opposing this ignorant and mistaken concep- 
tion, some zealous persons" — themselves ignorant of 
the true meaning of redemption — have put upon 
the doctrine a foolish, forceless, mystical interpre- 
tation. A minister was heard to say, "Does any 
one suppose that we are saved by those drops of 
blood which fell down from our Savior's side into 
the ground and perished ? We are saved by the 
spiritual blood." Alas, what nonsense ! One of 
his hearers, however, reminded him that " spiritual 
blood '' is a contradiction in terms, since a spirit 
has no blood. Some of his hearers afterward fell 
into a controversy over the statement that some of 
the Savior's blood " fell into the ground and per- 
ished." Some considered the statement heterodox, 
as denying the Divinity of Christ. It was an un- 
necessary and unwarrantable statement, of course \ 
but whichever way it was settled, could have noth- 



ERRORS ABOUT THE BLOOD. 215 

ing to do with proving or disproving the Divinity 
of our Lord. That sublime doctrine rests upon a 
firmer foundation than any human reasoning, the 
word of God which endureth forever, and is 
abundantly corroborated by the cloud of witnesses 
who have put that word to the experimental test 
through repentance toward God and faith in our 
Lord Jesus Christ. Some thought that if a drop 
of the Savior's blood could perish, certainly His 
blood could not have saving efficacy. This 
thought also shows a very imperfect apprehension 
of the nature of salvation or of the atonement. To 
one who understands the doctrine, such discussions 
seem trivial, if not irreverent. The hope of salva- 
tion rests not upon any material substance, how- 
ever exalted its nature or its association, nor upon 
any spiritual substance either, but upon the ac- 
complished fact that the Son of God has suffered 
for us, " the chastisement of our peace," the 
" stripes " due to " our transgressions," " that we by 
his poverty might be made rich ; " that we " might 
receive the forgiveness of sins, and inheritance 
among them that are sanctified," by repentance 
toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ; 
that the Just has suffered for the unjust, and the 
Infinite Cne for the finite ; that having thus borne 



2l6 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

in His own person the penalty of our transgressions, 
He is able to intercede for ns with the Father; 
that He ever liveth to make intercession for us ; 
and that in view of His perfect offering, God may 
and does offer salvation to all who will repent and 
believe. We repeat, further, that the great atone- 
ment reached its completeness in " the offering of 
the body of Jesus Christ" by the shedding of His 
blood; and that therefore the expressions " saved 
by the blood," u washed in the blood," redeemed 
" by the precious blood," " sanctified by the offering 
of the body of Jesus Christ," etc., are but the plain, 
simple, full confession that our salvation is pur- 
chased for us by the sacrificial death of the Son 
of God. 

Some have made a very sad mistake by using in 
an improper way the Old Testament expression, 
"The blood is the life." Deut. 12. 23. They have 
used these words as indicating that salvation comes 
through the life of Christ without His death ; in 
other words, that any one who conscientiously 
seeks to follow the example and teachings of Christ 
will find salvation in this attempted imitation ; or, 
as others think, since Christ u lighteth every man," 
Christ lives in every man, and this life within 
saves, or may save, every man. For such ideas the 



ERRORS ABOUT THE BLOOD. 2iy 

Bible furnishes no foundation, and those who hold 
such notions are mistaken. When the L,aw says 
(Lev. 17, 11) "It is the blood that maketh atone- 
ment for the soul," no intelligent reader would 
affirm that reference is had to the blood as it 
courses through the system and ministers to the 
vital functions ; but to the blood shed, poured out, 
the sign of death. When the apostle says (Rom. 
5. 10), " Being reconciled, we shall be saved by His 
life," his point is, that as His death has reconciled 
us to God, making our salvation possible, His life, 
as our High Priest and Intercessor, our Prince 
and Captain, assures salvation to all who come 
unto God by Him. 

But of all the errors upon this subject there is 
none more sad than the forgetfulness into which 
regenerate persons allow themselves to fall. They 
plead for God's blessings and enjoy them when re- 
ceived, but become so occupied with these, and 
with their so-called Christian work, that they fail 
to recall daily and vividly the cost of their redemp- 
tion. No wonder that such Christians grow cold, 
lifeless, proud, over-sensitive, fruitless. They do 
not dwell " in the secret place of the Most High." 
Those memorable words in Exodus 12. 13, "When 
I see the blood, I will pass over you, " have a pres- 



2l8 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

ent significance to the saint as well as to the sin- 
ner. Calamities come to believers, and come as 
judgments too, because they have ceased to 
dwell at the mercy-seat, under the blood, taking 
their cross daily and following Christ. There is no 
state in grace so exalted as to render it unnecessary 
or unhelpful to remember daily the cost of our re- 
demption. No thought so humbles us, none so ex- 
alts the love of God for us, none so warns or so 
inspires ; and when this thought lives and works 
in us, as the Holy Spirit would have it do, Christ 
is our effectual refuge. Calamities come not, for 
" all things work together for good " to us. " There 
shall no evil befall thee." We are always then on 
praying ground, for we ask nothing in our own 
name. We are on believing ground, for we reckon 
that we are nothing, and that Christ is all ; we are 
always surrendered to death for Jesus' sake, and 
always trusting Him for the great salvation and its 
blessed fruits. " As ye have received Christ Jesus 
the Lord, so walk ye in Him." 



CHRIST AND THE CHILDREN. 219 

APPENDIX L. 
CHRIST AND THE CHILDREN. 

|N the entire scope of Christian theology, there 
* are few themes of deeper interest than the rela- 
tion in which children stand to God, through the 
Atonement wrought by Jesus Christ. There are few 
themes a right understanding of which could add 
more vigor and efficiency to the efforts of parents, 
teachers and ministers to save souls. Observe the 
following points carefully, and see whether they do 
not furnish fresh and powerful incentives to soul- 
winning : 

1 — " Death came by sin" — " death " in the sense 
of separation from God — and this meant the loss of 
power to enjoy communion with God, to discern 
spiritual things, to live a life of holiness or even to 
admire it. It meant the loss of the Divine image 
and of sonship, as these are presented in the Scrip- 
tures. But it had a positive as well as a negative 
meaning. It meant a union with Satan, the prince 
of darkness, a service of sin, an unconscious antag- 
onism to the will and moral attributes of God, 
becoming conscious when that will and those attri- 
butes were made known. 

Read Rom. 3. 9-19, for a faithful description of 
man considered apart from the work of redemption. 



220 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

Read Gal. 5. 19-21, for the fruits of the natural 
man. 

2 — The state of darkness, blindness, death, sin- 
fulness, into which Adam fell, must, by natural law 
alone, have been the state of his posterity. 

3 — That it is not the state of infants, is clearly 
shown by the teachings of the Scriptures. While 
it is made certain that by natural law, or "by 
nature," " all were dead " ■(" in Adam all die"), it is 
made equally certain that little children are in a 
state of spiritual life. Read thoughtfully the fol- 
lowing references : 

Bph. 2. 1 (R. V.), " When ye were dead through 
your trespasses and sins ;" and 2. 5, " When we 
were dead through our trespasses." Certainly if we 
are dead through our trespasses, we must have been 
alive before- our trespasses. In our infancy we were 
not under law, for we could not apprehend law ; 
and "when there is no law, sin is not imputed." 

Rom. 7. 9, " For I was alive without the L,aw 
once ; but when the commandment came, sin re- 
vived, and I died." Paul could not have given a 
clearer statement than this, to show that infants are 
alive to God, and that those who reach the years of 
accountability sin, and become dead through their 
own transgression. Yet Paul is ever clear that life, 



CHRIST AND THE CHILDREN. 221 

in the evangelical sense, does not come by nature, 
but by grace. 

John i. 9, "That was the true light which 
lighteth every man coming into the world," or 
(margin) " as he cometh into the world." But " the 
natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit 
of God * * neither can he know them, because 
they are spiritually discerned." Christ, therefore, 
u lighteth every man coming into the world "by 
imparting to him spiritual life." The life was the 
light of men. Hence the quick discernment of in- 
nocent children, in spiritual things ; more quick, 
by far, than when these same children have forfeited 
the blessed life by deliberate sin. 

Mark 9. $7) " Whosoever shall receive one of 
such little children in my name, receiveth me." 
Compare this with Jesus' statement to the apostles, 
"He that receiveth you, receiveth me." Nowhere 
does Jesus use such expressions respecting the 
unsaved. L,ittle children are classed with the 
justified, and may be received in Jesus' name ; and 
those who thus receive them, receive Him. 

Mat. 18. 3, " Except ye turn and become as little 
children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom 
of heaven." It stultifies the meaning of Jesus to 
say that He means merely to become gentle, teach- 



222 THE LAMB OF GOD. 

able, obedient, humble, etc., these qualities being 
by no means uniformly exhibited by little children. 
The deeper meaning is doubtless here intended 
which harmonizes with other teachings of Scripture 
on the same subject. 

Mat. 1 8. 10, " See that ye despise not one of 
these little ones ; for I say unto you, that in heaven 
their angels do always behold the face of my Father 
which is in heaven.' ' 

Compare this with Heb. i. 14. " Are they (the 
angels) not all ministering spirits, sent forth to do 
service for the sake of them that shall inherit salva- 
tion?" The comparison at least strongly suggests 
that the little children are " heirs of salvation." 

4 — But this wonderful truth must not be so held 
as to exclude or limit that other truth, applicable to 
all accountable persons. "If we say we have not 
sinned, we make Him a liar." On reaching the age 
of accountability, all men sin and come short of the 
glory of God. The Holy Ghost, through the Scrip- 
tures, is the infallible witness to this fact ; and the 
growing up of the child in favor with God, without 
being "born again," is a thought which has no 
foundation in the Scriptures, except in the case of 
Jesus, who is as plainly declared to have been 



CHRIST AND THE CHILDREN. 223 

without sili, as all other accountable human beings 
are declared to have sinned. 

5 — The age at which a child becomes account- 
able, or, in other words, capable of a deliberate 
transgression against God, depends very much upon 
the amount and kind of its religious instruction. 
Evidently some reach this age and become con- 
scious of sin very early — at three or four years of 
age, perhaps younger. 

6 — The minister needs have no hesitation in 
affirming the salvation of those who die in infancy. 

7 — The plain, simple spiritual truths of Christi- 
anity should be clearly taught to infant classes. 
They will apprehend and apply them far better, 
and remember them far more helpfully, than if 
they hear them only after they have become 
transgressors. Every experiencd teacher knows 
how much more receptive is a saved soul than 
an unsaved. L,et the little child be taught 
that God loves him ; that that which tenders his 
heart as he thinks of God and of duty, is the 
Holy Spirit Himself; that God is always dis- 
pleased with sin, and that those who sin cannot en- 
joy the same happy communion with God as those 
who always obey Him ; that all our good, kind, 
loving thoughts come from God to us ; while evil 



224 T H 3 IAMB OF GOD. 

thoughts and feelings are from the wicked one; 
that when we have sinned and separated ourselves 
from God, we can only return by repentance toward 
God and faith in Jesus Christ ; that unless we do so 
return, we shall he. forever separated ; and then the 
exceeding blessedness of returning, as contrasted 
with the sorrows of endless sin. 

These and kindred truths little children learn 
easily, and early show " the work of the law writ- 
ten in their hearts," and a sweet work of grace in 
addition to this. 

8 — It is an inestimable advantage to the child 
to reach the age of accountability while yet in his 
tender years, before actions and states which are 
contrary to the Divine will have acquired the 
power of habits. Conversion will thus be likely to 
occur in those tender years, and the child may be 
truly brought up " in the nurture and admonition of 
the Lord." 

9 — This truth respecting the relation of little 
children to God, throws light upon certain ques- 
tions respecting the heathen. 

Even heathen children have formed in them, 
through the Spirit, ideals of sin and righteousness, 
of obligations to God and man, of peace and con- 
demnation* When they reach accountability and 



CHRIST AND THE CHILDREN. 225 

sin, thus losing the life they had, those ideals will 
live in memory, and exert more or less influence 
upon moral character. And those ideals live and 
work by natural law ; hence the apostle could say> 
" the Gentiles * * do by nature the things con- 
tained in the law," even though he knew perfectly, 
and taught clearly, that that which they thus did 
by nature, came to them by grace. 

The ideals thus furnished must differ widely in 
clearness and accuracy, according to the instruction 
received by the child, and hence in the degree of 
their influence upon his character. But they exist 
in every one, and form the basis of the universal 
Divine appeal, not only in childhood but in later 
life. This enlightening work of grace in every 
heart, clearly accounts for the good morals and the 
lofty moral teachings of many heathens who were 
still unsaved, and were therefore not safe guides in 
matters of religion. But it must also fill us with 
compassionate longing to bring to every child, in 
Christian or in heathen lands, the clear light of 
Divine revelation. It must make us long that, as 
teachers of the young, we may skillfully co-operate 
with the work of grace in their hearts, that they 
may early rejoice in salvation and shine as lights 
in the world. If children are properly instructed 



226 THE UMB OF GOD. 

in the things of God, they will, it is true, earlier 
sin and lose the imparted life ; but they will be 
nearly certain to return, repent and live ; and with 
proper care they will be converted very early y 
wholly sanctified very early, become workers for 
Christ early, and realize in the most perfect manner 
possible the precious will of God concerning them. 



ALPHABETICAL INDEX. 

PAGB. 

Abel — See Offering. 

Abraham taught redemption by substitution - 51 

Adam's temptation - 30 

His sin as affecting his posterity ^ - 31 
Its penal consequences removed from the child 

by the Atonement 35 

Agony of Christ in the Garden - - - 87 

Removed in answer to prayer - 88 

On the Cross - - - 90 

Its cause 91 

Its consequence — physical death - - 93 

Annihilationism not Scriptural - - - 179 

Bible, The, a product of Divine inspiration - 12 

Its true interpretation - - - - 12 

Benefits of the Atonement .... 109-153 

I. Removal of legal barrier to salvation - - 109 

II. Gift of life to every child - - - -no 

III. Illumination of every child by Christ - 112 

IV. Means of rational instruction to sinners - - 117 

V. Forgiveness of sins - - - - 121 

VI. Sanctification (complete) of believers - - 124 

VII. Power of believer to prevail in prayer - 128 

VIII. Reprieve of believer who sins - - - 129 

IX. Redemption of the body - - - 133 

X. Enthronement with Christ - - - 135 

XI. The perfect headship of Christ - - 136 

XII. The revelation of the love of God - - 145 
Blood — No remission without - ... 48 

Reasons for this - - - - 49 



228 THE UMB OF GOD. 

PAGE 

Bloodless offering of Cain rejected 50 

Blood of beasts cannot take away sin - - - 53 

Reasons for this ----- 54-60 

Blood of human being could not - - - 61 

Blood of Christ — Meaning of - - - 107 

Blood — Some errors about — Appendix K. - - - 213 

Captaincy of Christ - 139 

Christ the fulfillment of type and prophecy - 66 

The perfect model ----- 67 

The perfect teacher - - - - 67 

God and man ... 65 

Saves by His death - - - - - 73 

Christ and the children - - - 34, no, 219 

Complete in Him - - - - - -136 

Conclusion ------- 150 

Consequences of sin — See sin. 

Cross-bearing, its true spirit ----- 147 

Crucifixion of Christ as showing human depravity - 78 
The occasion, not the cause of Christ's death - 94 

Yet murder ----- 95 

Death as the wages of sin - - - - - 22 

Brought in by Adam 29 

As a penalty, not physical, but spiritual - - 22 

Spiritual, illustrated - - - - 27 

Entailed by natural law - - - 31 
Not entailed — natural law superseded - 34, no, 219 

Death of Christ for us spiritual - - - 85 

Physical, the result of death spiritual - 93 

Essential to our salvation - - 71 
Substitutional - - - 49, 71, 73, 143 

Voluntary - - - - - 86 

Not merely that of a martyr - - 74 

Depravity of man shown in the slaying of Jesus - 78 

Ignorance could not excuse 79 

Depravity, total — Appendix E . - - - 183 

Despair of humanity respecting salvation - - 63 

Difficulties of salvation - - - - - 39 

Disease may be a penalty for sin - - - 24 



ALPHABETIC AL INDEX. 239 

PAGE 

Divine love shown in self-sacrifice - 145 

Divine Fatherhood — Appendix F 191 

Divine Passibility — Appendix I 206 

Divine wrath — Appendix C - - - 170 

Doctrine of future punishment — Appendix A 157 
Early clear revelation of plan of salvation — Appendix H. 199 
Enthronement with Christ ----- 135 

Errors about blood — Appendix K- - - - 213 

Exaltation of Christ through His vicarious death - - 143 

Fall of man described ----- 29 

Natural consequences - - - 29 

Forgiveness of sins - - - - - 121 

Could not be unconditional - - - 45 

Could not be conditioned on repentance only 45 

God our Savior - - - - - 65 

God and man in the person of Christ 65 

God our Lawgiver and Judge as well as our Father - 44 

God unalterably just ----- 39 

Infinitely compassionate - - - - 44 

Headship of Christ ----- 139-143 

Heathen prophets - - - - - - 54 

Heathen resort to human sacrifices 57 

Hell considered — Appendix A 157 

Helplessness of sinner but for Divine intervention - 39 

Holy Ghost a Being, not a mere principle - - 127 

Illumination of all men by Christ - - - 112 

Immortality of the soul - - - - - 175 

Impartation of i^ife to every child - - - no 

Incarnation of Christ, why necessary - - 71 

Because of sin only - - 71 

Intervention, Divine, lifts race penalty - - "34 

Introduction ------ 9 

Life from the dead the purpose of Christ's work - 68 

Life not an imitation but a creation 68 

Light by Christ the UFB - - - - - no 

By Christ the illuminator - - - - 112 

Longing of ancients for complete sacrifice - - - 55 

Man as made ------ 18 



23O THE LAMB OF GOD. 

PAGE 

Man as fallen - - - - - - -28 

Natural law superseded by Divine intervention - 34 

Nature of man not the cause of sin - - - 18 

Nature, " Children of wrath by" - .- - 37 

Doing things in the law by - - - 119 

Offering for sin one of the earliest practices 49 

Required, a sacrifice with blood - - 49 

Of beasts could not atone 53 

Of beasts why accepted - - - 53 

Of human beings forbidden 57 

Of human beings practiced - - "57 

With blood denoted what 52 

The longing for a perfect one - - 55 

Of Abel, why accepted 50 

Of Cain, why rejected - - - -50 

Of Noah, Abraham, and Job 51 

The lesson of these redemption by substitution - 52 

Of Christ voluntary ... - 85 

By Himself ag High Priest - 87 

Efficient 99 

Sufficient - - - - 99 

Original sin — Appendix E. - - - - 189 

Redemption the means of salvation - - - 47 

Must be by substitution 49 
Required a rational and immortal, a holy and 

an infinite sacrifice - - 60 

Of the body a benefit of the Atonement - 133 
Sacrifice — See Offering. 

Salvation by grace only - - - - 60 

Sanctification (complete) the purchase of Jesus' blood 127 
Subsequent to regeneration through baptism 

with Holy Ghost - - - 124 

Satan, his personality — Appendix B. - - 163 

Suffering largely the result of sin - - - 22 

Sometimes penal 24 

Not always penal - ... - 25 



ALPHABETIC AI, INDEX. 23 1 

PAGE 
Sin, its universality - - - - - 15 

Natural consequences of 20 

Penalty of ------ 22 

Forgiveness of- - - - - -121 

Indwelling, removed by baptism with the Holy Ghost 125 
Not in the original nature of man - - 18 








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